Category Archives: All Vinyl Apocalypse

1,111 greatest records you probably haven’t already heard

784. alcohol heart

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“54-40 have given us a lot of good albums over the years, but the only one I’d truly call great was their second, the one called simply 54-40. A mostly straight up rock record that was (a rarity for the 1980s) not a pile of dumb clichés, but rather a collection of smart, solid songs with Alcohol Heart a particular stand out because it never got overplayed (even on campus and community radio) and yes, as a matter of fact, it tells the truth. Drink enough (but not too much) and close your eyes, and you really can feel the whole damned world.” (Philip Random)

5440-1986

785. avalanche

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In which Leonard Cohen weighs in on the stuff of love and confusion and the avalanches that sometimes cover one’s soul. We’ve all known them. In Philip Random’s case, there was some LSD-25 involved and yes, it eventually occurred to him that he hadn’t completely annihilated his ego, and that it wasn’t God Himself singing to him from the far side of the room with a face as big as a fireplace, it was in fact a fireplace and a scratchy side of Leonard Cohen vinyl that someone had thoughtfully put on. And it was good.

LeonardCohen-1971

786. Lila Engel

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“In which motorikly inclined German hippies Neu! do their bit to invent post-punk a good three or four years before we even had Punk. Of course, I wouldn’t discover Lila Engel until at least ten years after all that, so for me, it had more to do with providing an overall blueprint for the future of everything. Just lock that beat and lay down some music mixed with noise, because as a wise man once said (it might even have been me), we’ll always need a beat, and there will always be noise, might as well mix in some music.” (Philip Random)

787. king’s lead hat

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“Second of two in a row from Brian Eno’s Before And After Science, because the post-punk frenzy of King’s Lead Hat has never really sounded right to me unless it’s fading up from the strange and sensual calm of Energy Fools the Magician (and vice versa). In fact, the whole first side of that album is an argument for the whole being more than the sum of its parts, even as the parts are, in turns, disorienting, magnificent, groovy, abstract, intense, everything. And Side Two – well, that’s a whole other kind of journey.” (Philip Random)

788. energy fools the magician

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“It took me a while to warm to what Brian Eno was up to come the later 1970s. Actually, what it took was a cold night, a small town, a dose of weapons grade LSD, a bunch of people playing foosball, taking it way too seriously. Meanwhile, the soundtrack was the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, other resolutely non-psychedelic options. Something Has To Change, said a voice in my head (several million of them actually). But I couldn’t change the people or the town or even go outside really, it was too f***ing cold. But I did have this Brian Eno cassette in my pocket that a friend had recently slipped me. I could change the music. Before And After Science, said the cassette, and inevitably, effectively, seductively, about four tracks in, energy fooled the magician, and nothing’s ever really been the same.” (Philip Random)

789. ode to perfume

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“The whole of Holger Czukay‘s third solo album, On The Way to the Peak of Normal, is a weird and mysterious and wonderful gem, with Ode to Perfume (the full version which fills the entire second of side of vinyl) particularly notable because of that haunting melody at the beginning – actual chunks of somebody else’s song that I vaguely recognized but could never place (sampling before they called it sampling), until I finally did place it, but only because a friend’s mp3 shuffle randomly threw the two of them on pretty much one after another. It’s Suspicion made famous by Jimmy Stafford, a genius piece of paranoid pop if there ever was one.” (Philip Random)

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