an ode to my 5s
I dedicate this list to sach and hal1ax, for introducing me to the other side of music. |
| 1 |  | Ad Nauseam
Imperative Imperceptible Impulse
Like an opera in Hell |
| 2 |  | Anne Guthrie
Perhaps a Favorable Organic Moment
Like being trapped in a giant empty aircraft hangar while a hurricane gathers outside, and the only other person in there with you is a stranger over in the corner, sitting on a crate and playing sad notes on his saxophone |
| 3 |  | Arthur Russell
World of Echo
Like watching a John Hughes film on ecstasy, but everything in your TV speakers is blown out except the bass |
| 4 |  | Atrofia Cerebral
Fase Critica
Like an army of howler monkeys throwing a vicious riot in the zoo, eventually burning it all to the ground |
| 5 |  | Black Leather Jesus
Paid in Rough Trade
Like being inside a FedEx hub when every single piece of machinery there is malfunctioning |
| 6 |  | Black Lines
Black Lines
Like flying at light-speed through a virus-infected cyberspace |
| 7 |  | Black Thread
Meadowlark (Premonition)
Like coming home from a terrible day at work, wrapping yourself up in your fluffiest blanket with a cup of hot chocolate or tea, leaning back, closing your eyes and surrendering your whole self to the silence around you |
| 8 |  | Bladee
Eversince
Like being a homeless teenager in a Minnesota January, using your last funds on a Perc because at least then the cold isn't so noticeable |
| 9 |  | Bladee
GLUEE
Like being an affluent Japanese teenager who's totaled three cars by driving too fast on icy roads while drunk, but his parents just keep buying him new ones |
| 10 |  | Bluetile Lounge
Lowercase
Like walking through a nature preserve in the peak of autumn and a perfect-temperatured breeze caresses your face, the sheer perfection of it making a miniscule moment feel eternal |
| 11 |  | Brethren
Savage Inequalities
Like taking a wrong turn onto a dirt road in the backwoods, and a gang of chuds jumps out of the bushes, slashes your tires, smashes your windows, drags you out of your car and back to their barn where they tie you up, douse you in honey and horse shit, and watch as the flies consume you, laughing hysterically |
| 12 |  | Brutal Shift
Most of Humanity Might as Well Bathe...
Like the bittersweet feeling of accepting that life has no inherent meaning (the whole album title is Most of Humanity Might as Well Bathe in Bleeding Rust and Fly Shit) |
| 13 |  | Cecil Taylor
One Too Many Salty Swift And Not Goodbye
Like the seventh and eighth hours of a music academy performance if the students were given no time limit |
| 14 |  | Choi Joonyong, Devin DiSanto
Strange Skills
Like watching an old man build furniture |
| 15 |  | Controlled Bleeding
Phlegm Bag Spattered
Like having a terrible poison ivy itch and scratching it to the point of orgasm |
| 16 |  | Current 93
I Have A Special Plan For This World
Like inadvertently stumbling across an unnamed, undiscovered AM radio station and deciding to listen to what the man has to say |
| 17 |  | David Liebe Hart
Astronaut
"The peak of music." -jrlikestodance (I agree) |
| 18 |  | David Thomas Broughton
Crippling Lack
Like if Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson made a folk album |
| 19 |  | Defeated Sanity
Psalms of the Moribund
Like listening to a group of guys who are stupidly good at their instruments play remarkably well-composed death metal music |
| 20 |  | Deine Lakaien
White Lies
Like being one of the human characters in Kingdom Hearts |
| 21 |  | Destroy All Monsters
1974 - 1976
Like going into the back room at a sound archive and going through every single unlabeled cassette on the shelves with a pair of shitty computer lab headphones |
| 22 |  | Devouring Humanity
Devouring Humanity
Like a jackhammer that won’t turn off, so you throw it and watch as it flails about like a chattering wind-up toy, completely demolishing the streetscape before you |
| 23 |  | Effluence
Psychocephalic Spawning
Like a bunch of orcs trying to build a boat, but they can't agree on what the design should be. And in the process of all of them attaching the features they think should be there despite the constant disagreement, they end up accidentally making a death metal album |
| 24 |  | Effluence
Sarmat
Like being unable to move in your bed as a sleep paralysis demon hovers above you, playing Peter Brotzmann's 'Machine Gun' on repeat through a megaphone |
| 25 |  | Effluence
Destructive Transfixed Incorporeality
Like being locked in a house made of reverse-tinted glass, feeling like you're being watched but with no way to be certain |
| 26 |  | Flesh
Flesh
Like getting your skin peeled off slowly, layer by layer, with a potato peeler |
| 27 |  | Forces
Plastisphere
Like finding out the ocean was actually just a holographic simulation the entire time (Remember that episode of The Simpsons where a fortune teller shows Lisa her future? That part where the guy kicks the tree back on when it starts glitching, and it zooms in to show a plaque at the base of the tree that says "In memory of a real tree"?) |
| 28 |  | Francisco Lopez
untitled (2021-2022)
Like that hallway in Willy Wonka that gradually gets smaller and smaller the further you walk down it, except the hallway is made of trees |
| 29 |  | Francisco Lopez
Silent Trains [Korea]
Like playing "Heads Up 7-Up" in school, how everyone was supposed to be quiet, but you could still hear things happening in the room around you |
| 30 |  | Francisco Lopez
DSB
Like being trapped inside a capsizing submarine, watching strange deep-sea creatures bump against the windows |
| 31 |  | Graham Lambkin and Jason Lescalleet
The Breadwinner
Like taking a road trip in the winter to visit an elderly relative you've never met before who lives in a cottage in the middle of the woods |
| 32 |  | Henry Cow
In Praise of Learning
Like if Allen Ginsberg was a female Munchkin and led her army of Munchkins in a revolt against the Wicked Witch |
| 33 |  | Hexalyne / Lain
Evel 46
a) Like going to a shopping mall on another planet
or
b) Like listening to a HitClip of The Postal Service that's been through the wash |
| 34 |  | Iron Lung
Sexless // No Sex
Like being at a basement show, and these guys, the guys who live at the house, are the last band to go on and spend half their set yelling at the crowd for how messy they always leave the house |
| 35 |  | Jed Speare
Sound Works 1982-1987
Like hearing a ghost trying to tell you something through a walkie-talkie, but it keeps cutting out so much you never make out a full sentence |
| 36 |  | Jefre Cantu-Ledesma
Bloodstream Sermon
Like getting super high and mistakenly microwaving something for 10 minutes instead of 1, then leaning against the microwave and getting lost in the hum |
| 37 |  | Ju Sei and Utah Kawasaki
ゆはゆたのゆ
Like if the pink robots joined Yoshimi's band and they all lived happily ever after |
| 38 |  | Keiji Haino and Sumac
Into This Juvenile Apocalypse Our Golden Blood...
Like watching the formation of a mountain |
| 39 |  | Kevin Drumm
Imperial Distortion
a) Like being the only one at an aquarium
or
b) Like passing out in your car in an empty parking lot at midnight, parked right next to the only lightpost, waking up to some ghostly thing tapping on your window and finding it's snowed 6 inches while you were passed out |
| 40 |  | Koobaatoo Asparagus
"Greatest Hits"
Like meeting God and finding out he has no idea what's going on, either |
| 41 |  | Last Days of Humanity
Putrefaction in Progress
Like a bunch of grave-robbers throwing a kegger at the cemetery after the best haul of their careers |
| 42 |  | Lull
Moments
Like getting lost in an underground cave, and above you are bulldozers preparing to dig down to where you are |
| 43 |  | Morton Feldman
Triadic Memories
Like a lucid dream of being in a sensory deprivation chamber |
| 44 |  | Omar S
Just Ask the Lonely
Like staying up all night playing Pong and drinking Mountain Dew Code Red |
| 45 |  | Ought
Sun Coming Down
Like watching your intelligent, but socially awkward coworker drunkenly trying to sing 'Once in a Lifetime' by Talking Heads at the office karaoke night |
| 46 |  | Patricia Taxxon
TECHDOG 1-7
Like being born, dying, and being born again |
| 47 |  | Pedestrian Deposit
Fatale
Like a coffee enema (people really do this) |
| 48 |  | Peste Noire
Ballade cuntre lo Anemi francor
Like a battle between a neighborhood of dwarves and a giant troll who's been stealing tomatoes from the dwarves' garden for far too long. They've finally had it. So they assemble into Mega-Dwarf, including the sword (the dwarf at the top of the sword is wearing a spiky helmet), and drive the sword all the way through the troll's chest. They pull the sword out quick enough so no one gets hurt when the troll collapses, though there are a few dwarves now covered in troll blood. They have a laugh about it. Then they go and shower and later that evening, they have a raucous celebration! |
| 49 |  | Royal Trux
Twin Infinitives
a) Like you spilled a bunch of soda all over a stack of 90s garage rock records, then played three of them at once all on different turntables through six different speakers of which the wires are terribly chewed
or
b) Like a hallucination of a time machine-mechanic shop that came from delirium after not sleeping for three days |
| 50 |  | Ryu Hankil
Becoming Typewriter
Like a race between three grandmas to see who can knit a sweater the fastest on their sewing machines |
| 51 |  | Seijiro Murayama / Eric La Casa
Supersedure 2
Like someone bored in his garage lazily messing around on his shitty old drumkit while having LSD flashbacks every few minutes |
| 52 |  | Sightings
Absolutes
Like an old SPK cassette that some angsty kid taped his anarchist manifesto over a hundred times, to the point where the tape is starting to disintegrate |
| 53 |  | SIR E.U
I Will Never Let You Go
Like if an airbender could apply that same power to words he hears spoken, bending their connotations to his will |
| 54 |  | SIR E.U
R E D H E L L Y/Twin Towers
Like if Nickelodeon made a rap album |
| 55 |  | Skee Mask
Pool
Like canoeing down the Amazon River |
| 56 |  | Strict
Kiss
Like being one of the victims in a Saw movie |
| 57 |  | Tantric Bile
Unbidden
Like watching a performance by the Cantina band in Star Wars, then suddenly a spaceship crashes into the building and a bunch of stormtroopers appear and start shooting at everyone, so you go hide in Jabba's lair because it's the closest refuge. The sounds of the lasers are still faintly in the background, but now you're more distracted by Jabba's snoring |
| 58 |  | Taylor Deupree
Stil.
Like sitting in the world's quietest room, listening to your blood flow, which startles you so much it gives you a heart arrhythmia, which you also begin to hear |
| 59 |  | TCF
d87226ecae575c199309c09bb00631e1fb9519696a489e5d94
Like donning full scuba gear and playing a piano submerged in a super deep hot tub |
| 60 |  | The Dead C
Trouble
Like laying on the floor and staring at the ceiling so long the little textures start moving |
| 61 |  | Toshimaru Nakamura and Sachiko M
Do
Like watching a polka dot pattern create itself slowly, dot by dot |
| 62 |  | Toshiya Tsunoda
Somashikiba
Like listening to the sounds of the Sugaruya and Hakkeibara villages in Japan... because that's exactly what it is lol |
| 63 |  | Toshiya Tsunoda / Taku Unami
Wovenland 3
Like a bus tour around the world |
| 64 |  | Trichomoniasis
Makeshift Crematoria
Like a spinach-orange-and-cigarette smoothie |
| 65 |  | Tujiko Noriko
From Tokyo to Naiagara
Like spending an unforgettable night in a Tokyo arcade with all your friends, leaving at dawn, and watching a pink-and-blue sunrise above the cityscape as you walk home down the still-quiet streets |
| 66 |  | Various Artists (Ambient)
Mono No Aware
Like being taken to the Sun in the arms of Baymax from Big Hero 6 |
| 67 |  | Veliotis/Sugimoto/Kinoshita/Unami
Quartet
Like sitting in the waiting room at the doctor's office and every so often, someone nonchalantly walks out of the patient area with an extra limb. They quietly whistle out of the office and you go on watching Good Morning America |
| 68 |  | Vitaly Maklakov
For a Distant Lands
Like watching the formation of a star in even-slower-motion |
| 69 |  | Volksmorg
Volksmorg
Like if an air conditioner gained sentience only to keep just sitting there, humming |
| 70 |  | Wolfsheim
Casting Shadows
Like getting a really warm hug from that cute goth girl you always liked who was always kinda standoffish to you, until she saw you going through something rough that she could relate to |
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