Favorites: Albums — 401 to 425
What's in a name? This is why we check the credits...
#401: Black Mass (1971)
Artist: Lucifer (Mort Garson)
UNI Records
To answer the ultimate record-bin trivia question: the album is officially titled Black Mass and credited to the mysterious entity known as "Lucifer," but the mad scientist behind the curtain is undeniably early synthesizer pioneer Mort Garson. Long before he became internet-famous for composing warm, soothing electronic lullabies for houseplants on 1976's Mother Earth's Plantasia, Garson used his massive, room-sized Moog modular setup to tap straight into the era's booming occult craze. This 1971 instrumental trip is strange, unsettling, and totally avant-garde. For anyone who appreciates the meticulous craft of building electronic music from the ground up, hearing Garson coax these terrifying, heavy, and downright demonic textures out of early analog hardware is an absolute masterclass. It's an eerie, brilliant palate cleanser to kick off the next hundred albums in the archive.
#402: Gone Fishin' (1984)
Artist: Flipper
Subterranean Records
\Gone Fishin' is the sound of Flipper continuing to completely reject the established rules of the punk rock underground. While the entire scene was obsessed with the blistering speed of hardcore, Flipper actively trolled everyone by slowing their songs down to a heavy, miserable, doom-laden trudge. But what started as a way to annoy fast-tempo purists accidentally gave birth to sludge rock. Anchored by wildly distorted, blown-out basslines, erratic drum beats, and bursts of unhinged saxophone, the album carries a massive, droning sonic weight. It's an incredibly heavy, abrasive listen that proves you don't need to break the sound barrier to hit hard. Complete with its iconic die-cut tour van album cover, this Subterranean Records classic is an essential pull for anyone who appreciates the slow, crushing power of noise rock.
#403: Army Arrangement (1985)
Artist: Fela Anikulapo Kuti
Celluloid / Knitting Factory Records
Sometimes a record just finds you exactly when it's supposed to. For this archive, the journey of Army Arrangement started with the massive, sprawling grooves of the original 1985 Celluloid Records release blasting over the stereo system at Listening Booth in the Laurel Mall. It's a highly unique, controversial entry in the legendary Afrobeat pioneer's catalog. Because Fela was unjustly imprisoned by the Nigerian military government at the time over a bullshit "currency smuggling" charge, producer Bill Laswell was brought in to finish mixing the raw tapes. Laswell recruited heavyweights like Parliament-Funkadelic synth wizard Bernie Worrell and reggae drum legend Sly Dunbar, grafting 80s electronic textures and New York avant-funk onto Fela's massive brass sections and relentless polyrhythms. While it took until the early 2000s Barclays/MCA CD reissue (with the proper original mix, not Laswell's additions) to officially enter the collection, and later upgrading to the pristine Knitting Factory vinyl pressing, this album remains a foundational, deeply hypnotic introduction to the king of Afrobeat.
#404: Something/Anything? (1972)
Artist: Todd Rundgren
Bearsville Records
Looping all the way back to #37 (Band On The Run) when I mentioned being a seven-year0old interested in playing the drums, and my mother responded by pointing at two albums I was listening to around the same time and stating I should learn multiple instruments because Paul McCartney and... this is the other example she pointed at: The ultimate blueprint for the obsessive, one-man-band studio genius. Released as a sprawling double LP in 1972, Something/Anything? is Todd Rundgren completely off the leash and operating at the absolute peak of his powers. For any musician who understands the meticulous, solitary craft of building a track from the ground up, this album is a holy grail. Rundgren famously wrote, produced, sang, and played every single instrument on three of the record's four sides. He seamlessly bounced between delivering flawless, immortal pop gems like "I Saw the Light" and "Hello It's Me," and diving deep into weird, experimental tape manipulation and heavy guitar workouts. By the time the fourth side rolls around and he finally brings in a live band for a loose studio jam, the sheer scale of what he accomplished alone is staggering. It remains a towering, essential document of 1970s pop perfection and DIY analog audio engineering.
#405: The Man-Machine (1978)
Artist: Kraftwerk
Capitol / Kling Klang Records
The Man-Machine is ground zero for practically every electronic-based genre that followed in its wake. Embracing a rigid, retro-futuristic aesthetic, Kraftwerk crafted a flawless, synthesizer-driven masterpiece that laid the direct blueprints for synth-pop and techno. Yet, its most fascinating legacy lies in its massive, undeniable influence on early hip-hop. The beats crafted in Kling Klang Studio were so fundamentally heavy that Sir Mix-A-Lot famously champions the group as his favorite band, while 2 Live Crew heavily sampled the robotic, pulsing title track to anchor "Dick Almighty." For any creator of electronic music, this album remains the sacred text. My physical history with this album is a journey in itself: originating with the classic orange-label Capitol CD, graduating to a vinyl repress scored at Austin's legendary Waterloo Records in 2015 (the clusterfuck caused by the hipster chicken-and-waffles place next door be damned), and finally expanding to include the authentic German-language CD pressing, Die Mensch-Maschine. It is a towering, essential cornerstone of the entire collection.
#406: Fear of Music (1979)
Artist: Talking Heads
Sire Records
Caught perfectly between the twitchy, nervous energy of their early CBGB days and the massive, polyrhythmic funk expansion of Remain in Light, 1979's Fear of Music is the sound of Talking Heads peaking in real-time. With Brian Eno in the producer's chair, the band dives headfirst into incredibly dark, paranoid territory—the whole record essentially operates as an anxiety attack you can groove to. Tracks like "Life During Wartime" and "Cities" are undeniable post-punk staples, but it's the opening track, "I Zimbra," that really cracks the sky open. Taking a nonsensical, Dadaist poem by Hugo Ball and layering it over a frantic, suffocating Afrobeat rhythm was a stroke of absolute genius. It's the exact kind of brilliant, bizarre art-punk that could leave an unsuspecting parent staring at a late-night television broadcast in total, bewildered silence, while anyone actually in on the joke just dances along. A totally essential, weird pull for the archive.
#407: Highway 61 Revisited (1965)
Artist: Bob Dylan
Columbia Records
You can practically feel the attitude radiating right off the cardboard sleeve. Sitting on a New York stoop in a motorcycle t-shirt and holding his Ray-Bans in his hand, Dylan essentially out-punked Johnny Rotten and the entire 1970s CBGB scene a full eleven years early. And the grooves perfectly match the sneer on the cover. Released in 1965, this is the album where Dylan fully plugged in, completely turning his back on the acoustic folk purists to embrace loud, cynical, blues-drenched rock and roll. Fueled by Mike Bloomfield's absolutely searing electric guitar work and Al Kooper's legendary Hammond organ, the record hits like a freight train right from the iconic, opening snare crack of "Like a Rolling Stone." But the real journey is in the surreal, amphetamine-laced poetry. Hunching over a tape deck, furiously mashing pause and rewind to transcribe the bizarre cast of characters roaming through tracks like "Desolation Row" and "Tombstone Blues" off a cassette, is a quintessential, frustratingly beautiful rite of passage for any serious music fan. An untouchable, revolutionary classic.
#408: Dos (1986)
Artist: Dos
New Alliance Records
An absolutely hypnotic, minimalist masterpiece from the American punk underground. When Black Flag's Kira Roessler and Minutemen's Mike Watt — already an item for about a year at this point — teamed up in 1986, they completely tossed out the traditional band rulebook, opting instead to record an album using absolutely nothing but two bass guitars. There is a very specific, undeniable kinetic weight to Watt's playing — the exact kind of unmistakable groove he brings to any track he touches — and without a drummer or a guitarist to hide behind, you get to hear every single nuance of his fingers on the fretboard. Roessler perfectly counters his thick, thumping rhythm with her signature, trebly attack, creating a beautiful, intricate, almost jazz-like conversation between the two musicians. Kept almost entirely instrumental save for a single vocal track, this New Alliance release is an incredibly intimate, challenging, and endlessly fascinating listen that proves exactly how much heavy lifting the bass guitar can actually do. These songs would have impact beyond this release, as many of these songs would become the basis of songs on the first fIREHOSE album Ragin' Full-On.
#409: The Album (2020)
Artist: BLACKPINK
YG Entertainment / Interscope
Going straight from the stark, two-bass punk minimalism of Dos directly into the absolute maximalist, high-gloss stadium pop of BLACKPINK is exactly what makes navigating this growing list of favorite albums so incredibly fun. Released in late 2020, The Album arrived during the absolute darkest, most isolated days of the global COVID lockdowns, and it genuinely served as a much-needed lifeline of pure, escapist pop perfection. When the whole world was stuck inside, getting hit with the unapologetic, booming energy of "How You Like That" and "Lovesick Girls" was a total revelation. It is an immaculately engineered record that perfectly highlights the group's dynamic power—from the way Rosé's soaring vocals effortlessly cut through the heavy, club-ready production, to Lisa dropping razor-sharp, charismatic rap verses that completely anchor the tracks. It's a flawless, high-energy pop milestone that proved to be a massive shining light during a very heavy year.
#410: Filth (1983)
Artist: Swans
Neutral Records
Released in 1983 on Neutral Records, but now existing as an expanded 3CD set on Michael Gira's own Young God Records label, Filth isn't just a record — it's an endurance test, even in its original single-LP version. Michael Gira and guitarist Norman Westberg looked at the dying New York No Wave scene and decided to construct something fundamentally uglier. Today, achieving this kind of doom-laden, industrial heaviness often means stacking up software amps and digital distortion pedals. But in '83, Swans built their monolithic, sludgy architecture through sheer, terrifying analog brute force, utilizing two bass players, two drummers, and a crawling, deliberate tempo that sounds like sheet metal grinding against concrete. Stripped entirely of melody and conventional song structure, it is a brutal, essential cornerstone of extreme noise.
#411: Mind Games (1973)
Artist: John Lennon
Apple Records
When the massive, sprawling deluxe editions of this record recently dropped, a lot of casual fans scratched their heads. Because it doesn't carry the untouchable, mythic status of Imagine or the raw, primal scream therapy of Plastic Ono Band, some people wrote it off as a lesser entry. It was actually so undervalued by the industry that by 1981, Capitol had quietly relegated it to their green-label budget line — which is exactly where my original copy was scored. But anyone skipping this era of Lennon is massively missing out. Released in 1973, Mind Games catches John at a brilliant, messy crossroads. He was trying to shake off the exhausting political weight of his previous records, stepping into the producer's chair himself, and standing right on the edge of his infamous "Lost Weekend." The result is a highly melodic, searching, and surprisingly vulnerable collection of songs. The soaring title track alone is an absolute masterpiece of production, building a majestic, wall-of-sound architecture that proves Lennon didn't need Phil Spector in the room to create something sonically huge. A totally essential, wildly underrated gem for the collection.
#412: Arise (1991)
Artist: Sepultura
Roadrunner Records
This is the sound of a band completely stepping into their own power and refusing to blink. Released in 1991, Arise captures Sepultura at the exact moment they realized they were becoming global metal heavyweights. Frontman Max Cavalera was noticeably more comfortable writing and singing in English, which gave his already ferocious vocal delivery a sharper, more commanding, and rhythmic edge. But the biggest testament to their growing profile was the studio logistics. For their previous album, Beneath the Remains, producer Scott Burns had to be flown all the way down to Brazil. This time around, the band had the clout and the budget to travel straight to the undisputed mecca of extreme music: Morrisound Recording in Florida. The combination of the band's relentless, frenetic thrash riffs and that pristine, heavy Tampa studio polish resulted in an absolute masterpiece. It is an impossibly tight, punishing record that permanently cemented their legacy as international metal royalty.
#413: The Wall (1979)
Artist: Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd Records
Talk about a deeply complicated relationship with an album! The journey of 1979's The Wall through my archive is a wild ride. It started as a heavy junior high staple, back when hearing the rigid, disco-thump of "Another Brick In The Wall Pt. II" on the radio sparked the brilliant, totally understandable assumption that it was actually Devo! But once the punk rock awakening hit, it became a moral imperative to reject anything Pink Floyd released past Wish You Were Here as bloated, theatrical stadium excess. That distaste was severely compounded by the sheer, mood-killing trauma of playing in a band with a drunken bassist who would slur his way through a cover of "Another Brick," completely blind to how the actual bassline went. Throw in a friend's precociously stubborn (and later long rejected) theory that Roger Waters blatantly ripped off the plot of Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and the record carried serious baggage. But time heals all wounds. Scoring a pristine, modern pressing on the band's own label via the Amazon record club wiped the slate clean, finally allowing this massive, paranoid rock opera to be appreciated again as the brilliant, towering achievement it truly is.