Your Favorite Album

Or, alternately, the album that had the greatest impact on your life but is not necessarily your favorite?

Mine's more of the latter, but it is certainly one of my favorites: The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails. It was my first exposure to music that was considered "dark" or "experimental" by any means (before this album I was cultivated on Top 40s Pop Hits). It was the gateway drug to practically every band I enjoy today. And it still sounds just as fresh and powerful as when I first stumbled upon it!

[Pharpetron]

For me, it's Karajan's recording of Mozart's Requiem. I discovered it in my early teens and fell in love with it immediately. I grew up in a very sad and awful environment, but the music played in that environment always jarred with the tragic nature of the lives being lived there. Bubble-gum Latino pop and cheerful Pet-Shop-Boys disco served as the jarring and bubbly soundtrack for lives of plague, of starvation, of oppression, of short, terrible life, and slow, terrible death.

When I discovered Mozart's Requiem it was a revelation for me. It was music that took living and dying seriously and approached it with a certain gravitas and solemnity. It provided a refuge for me from the all the false cheerfulness and trivialization of life that was an essential component not only of the little world that I inhabited but of the whole world of "late global capitalism", a world that persists even to this day.

[Cnev]

Musically, Dillinger Escape Plan's Calculating Infinity. As a guitar player and someone who is interested in music composition, this was the album that completely shattered every idea I held about song structure, instrumentation and artistic expression. Still blows my mind to this day, and there still isn't anything like it out there. Their live shows were pure, visceral chaos.

Meshuggah's Catch 33 is another album that changed the way I looked at rhythm and displacement. It's amazing what patterns they arrange on top of a simple 4/4 time signatures.

Personally, too many to list.

[Justin Isis]

Glassjaw- Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence (Full Album) - YouTube

[miguel1984]

[gveranon]

Quote Originally Posted by miguel1984

...

I haven't decided whether I need that massive Dylan compilation. What interests me about the track listing is that it explodes the myth (which I had believed) that there were at most two studio takes of "Like a Rolling Stone." Holy ####.

[gveranon]

Van Morrison, Astral Weeks.

Quote Originally Posted by Justin Isis

Glassjaw- Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Silence (Full Album) - YouTube

I heard "Siberian Kiss" on Sirius XM a few weeks ago and thought it was rather impressive. Thanks for the rediscovery, Justin!

[miguel1984]

A box set, actually.

[damo]

Astral weeks is a good call, but it's a toss up between the white album by the Beatles or red by King crimson.