Most
of you have probably heard of the top 10-album challenge thing on the social
media spheres, it’s primarily on Fakebook.
Yours
truly was nominated and did it. A real friend on the site, Laura Clifford of
the great cable show, Reeling: The Movie Review Show, nominated me. Another
real life friend Mike Langlie of the incredible toy piano band, Twink suggested
that I do an essay on each of my choices; so here it is on this here blog.
The
way I viewed this challenge is believe it or not they aren’t necessarily my
favorite albums of all time, but rather they are records that came at a
formative time of my musical experiencing life and have stood the test of time,
consistently staying in orbit of my tune conciousness as well as being in the
stereo often enough to be on this list. The albums are listed in the order that
they were placed in on FB, which is to say merely in the order that they
occurred to me; not at all in order of how much I dig them.
So
having given you that entire foreground, let’s proceed.
Day
1.
Tangerine
Dream: Zeit.
This
isn’t a standard musical album; it’s a pure experience. At time’s in the double
album’s worth of tracks, it’s not even music, it’s pure sounds. Unearthly,
unhumanistic, strange, creepy, shape shifting sounds, this thing is all that
and more.
It
has only four tracks. Each of which consumed an album side back in the day. There
are distorted cellos, an early Moog synth, distorted organs, and sounds no
other human probably ever made. All of this blends through an amorphous filter
of gurgling soundscapes that wash through the conciousness.
This
is the soundtrack to a dream.
Upon
my first listening to this record I knew that there was something that
beautifully defied reason bursting into my ears.
This
album has been well traveled throughout my life. It was the soundtrack to many
Halloweens worth of handing candy out to the kids with it blaring through open
windows giving them a freak out as they received treats. The album is still
played regularly during late night writing sessions. The atmospheres greatly
helped to shape the Dracula novel I’ve been constructing. One Halloween at the
long gone amazing Middle Eastern bakery/coffee shop/restaurant the Crescent
Dragon we used this album as the soundtrack to the silent movie Nosferatu as we
heckled the film. A friend told me about listening to this album in black room
with a head full of LSD; it’s hard to imagine that not being a life changing
experience.
Here
is a link to the album. Listen to it and allow it to change your perceptions of
what music can be.
Yours in sounds beyond the human
race,
Count Robot
No comments:
Post a Comment