A classic! 
1 Like
- The Armed – ULTRAPOP (2021, Sargent House)
What an assault on the senses this record is. The new Loveless, according to Bob Mould.
My mate Ross put me onto this. I was working from home at the time and I found it really hard to digest new music while I was trying to work, I’d mostly put on ambient stuff or records I was already really familiar with and could let them wash over me. But I listened to ULTRAPOP on the shittiest of earbuds and immediately went in for round 2 after it finished. Think I listened to it 4 or 5 times that day then went down the rabbit hole trying to learn who the band were and that was some laugh I can tell you.
I listen to it a lot if I’m working out and I think they’d be chuffed to know that but maybe suggest that not every day should be leg day.
5 Likes
I downloaded this earlier this afternoon, on the basis that I’m on a massive post-hardcore binge at the moment.
You already know this - and rightly so - but I just wanted to say that it’s really fucking great.
4 Likes
Aw yes mate! Thank you very much! 
1 Like
- Idlewild – 100 Broken Windows (2000, Parlophone)
Been some ups and downs with this band. A firm favourite since I was a teen. I genuinely think if they’d called it quits after The Remote Part it would have been one of the most perfect discographies. But they kept releasing, and they got tedious. I’ve seen them a dozen times but the last time I saw them they were incredibly boring and ended up sound tracking the end of a 12 year relationship. Pretty grim, right? Well there’d been plenty of highs too, like seeing them rip through tracks from this record and Hope is Important in a big top tent at a Glasgow green festival with original line-up when I was 15. Like seeing them tear up the Falkirk Town Hall, like seeing them play this album in full at Tuts and that time they did a B-sides set. I still love them, somehow. And this is their best work.
9 Likes
Not heard of this before, I like it and would be proud too.
2 Likes
Does your blood forget is a fucking great song. Just sayin’ 
3 Likes
@jeromium @UncleRetrospective @weeber legends all of you 
2 Likes
- Blink 182 – Enema of the State (1999, MCA)
Sounds daft to say this, but I think they’re criminally underrated. That score they got on HGATR is a madness! This entire album is gold. Big school holiday record for me.
8 Likes
- Brian Eno – Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978, Polydor)
I use it in its literal sense. I listen to it when I’m in an airport. That’s it. It helps with the pre-flight jitters, that’s what I need it for, and it does the job, that and the CBD gummies.
3 Likes
- Departures – Death Touches Us From The Moment We Begin To Love (2016, Holy Roar)
Bit of bias here, this is one of my best mate’s bands. I’d really liked their previous two but they really nailed it with this one. They let me hear a couple of tracks on Christmas Eve the year before it came out and I was just desperate to hear the whole thing. Worth the wait.
It became their swan song which is a shame but a really good final piece of work to round off their career.
2 Likes
- Cloud Nothings – Here and Nowhere Else (2014, Wichita/Carpark)
Just a glorious, frantic, punk rock racket innit? Feel like Attack on Memory is considered the classic and I wouldn’t disagree with anyone who said it, but I prefer the songs on this one. Love the tempo change in Psychic Trauma and never fail to ask myself “how the fuck has he managed to keep that together!?” when the drums almost fall apart at the end. That final track is just so bittersweet, I love it.
7 Likes
Loved this album so much at the time. Revisited last year and it was still a lot of fun. Probably a good candidate for this thread though. Guilty pleasures I suppose.
Been on holiday for a week, but we back!
- Yeah Yeah Yeah’s – Fever to Tell (2003, Interscope)
I was drawn in by the singles played on MTV2 and the gushing reviews of live shows in the NME, but I stayed for Y Control. After the manic racket that’s made over the course of most of the record, I think closer Modern Romance is my favourite thing about it. Formative time in my life when this was released, I listened to a lot of dross, but this one has really stood the test of time. A classic.
13 Likes
- Ash – 1977 (1996, Infectious)
I mean, it opens with a TIE Fighter FFS! How do you expect me not to love that?
Feel like there was a long process of me getting into Ash. The older kids in scouts used to talk about them and I respected their taste, but it’s not like I could go and download any of their music or check them out on Spotify then and CDs were expensive (seem to remember 1977 was always really expensive in Virgin). They just sat in the back of my mind for a few years.
Then, I got a TV/VCR combo for Christmas one year and that changed my life. For the first time I could tape stuff that was on late at night. The things I wasn’t allowed to watch. Whether that be Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting, Goodfellas, Channel 4 late night music shows or BBC Glastonbury highlight packages. I can’t remember what came first, seeing Shining Light a year before release on a live show recorded for Ch4 or them ripping a Life Less Ordinary at Glasto 99 but I rinsed both recordings and asked for 1977 on CD for the following Christmas (my dad laughed asking me why I was into Wishbone Ash, remember that so clearly).
There are one or two duffers but to write and release an album whilst still at high school (right?) and for it to have Lose Control, Goldfinger, Girl From Mars as they opening trio, that alone, are you kidding me? Kung Fu, Oh Yeah, Angel Interceptor, Darkside Lightside? Come on!
10 Likes
- Kamasi Washington – The Epic (2015, Brainfeeder)
The scope of this thing absolutely melts my mind. A triple album clocking in at just shy of 3hrs as a debut release, what a way to introduce yourself. Epic is a truly fitting description as many tracks feature a full jazz band, string orchestra and choir to create what can only be described as transcendental, heavenly sounds. It’s worth taking a look at the recording credits to see the sheer volume musicians playing on each track. What’s even more mind bending that when seeing him live in 2007ish he mentioned that the year The Epic was recorded, each member of the band on stage that night had all released solo LPs and they’d all played on each other’s records. They must never sleep. Plus his DAD played with him!
I guess I probably would have picked this up from end of year lists but the fact it was on Brainfeeder while I was worshipping anything Flying Lotus put out had me listening to and loving it the day it was released. Heaven and Earth is also great but it never grabbed me as much as this.
Plus the cover art is COOL AS FUCK.
8 Likes
- David Bowie – Low (1977, RCA)
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It’s Low by David Bowie.
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3 Likes
- The Jesus Lizard – Goat (1991, Touch & Go)
Very late to the game with this band but they’ve become a bit of an obsession in the past couple of years and I love them to pieces. Absolute steamroller of a band! That punishingly tight rhythm section, those claustrophobic horror film vocals and some of Albini’s finest production work just making everything click together. An alt-rock classic, maybe the noise-rock OG, the blueprint for so many great bands.
16 Likes
- Death Grips – Money Store (2012, Epic)
This one took a looooong time for me to get. Found it way too abrasive at first but finally it clicked. They’re the band I expect to be playing in the only nightclub in the ruins of Neo-Tokyo. It’s pure Sci-fi, Cyberpunk. Once that idea cemented itself I loved Money Store.
6 Likes
Incredible album. Such a tight band, Denison’s spidery guitar, Yow one of the best frontmen around. Love it.
2 Likes