While re-listening to Bitches Brew tonight it occurred to me, there’s never been anything that sounds quite like it since, and there never will be again.
What are your favorite unicorn albums?
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Ha, I came here to say Bitches Brew before seeing it was in the OP!
I’d add Loveless by My Bloody Valentine: much-imitated, but there’s nothing quite like it.
Also, my early '90s bias is showing here, but In Utero by Nirvana is uniquely brilliant. No one’s melded beauty and ugliness so successfully in any medium.
hahaha no way, came across this comment as When You Sleep is playing.
agreed, oft imitated but never matched
So happy they finally made
m b vthough. It was an amazing coda to their masterpiece which gave some much appreciated closure and cemented loveless’s place as the gem of their collection.I saw an interview with them about how once they figured out how to play that way, time started to pass differently, and it was a healing experience for them.
what’s the story with m b v? I just looked and saw that it’s the only full album on spotify, loveless (and others?) is missing
Idk about spotify, but m v b has some poppy tunes, some experimental tunes, and def goes on a little journey. Kevin Shields talked about how part of it was music he had shelved after loveless and dusted off and got out the door. There are two or three tracks that stand out to me, but it is definitely worth a listen!
Cake’s first album Fashion Nugget is the kind of unique that we rarely see twice.
Endtroducing by DJ Shadow
It’s his inaugural album and there’s never been anything quite like it. Even his follow up albums, with his unique sound, feel a bit different than this one (not in a bad way, but I don’t think they meet your unicorn criteria).
Also, I think this easily goes in my top ten albums list.
I never heard of this artist or album before, so far I’m 1/4 through the listening and digging it, thanks for posting
One classic one I forgot
Art of noise - The seduction of claude debussy
Phenomenal blend of styles to create something truly unique.
Future Shock by Herbie Hancock. Dude released like 25 jazz and funk albums over two decades, then in '83 just drops a hip hop bomb
Oh my God that’s one of the things I love about Herbie so much! He was not afraid to push himself in new musical directions. He has so many albums in his vast discography that changed the musical landscape forever.
Hell, I just listened to Headhunters before I listened to Bitches Brew, before I posted! And on that album is the seminal Watermelon Man where he incorporates hindewhu (pygmy music).
I would encourage anyone to listen to any Herbie album, in full, from any era. His first 6 albums are dope as hell!!
Totally almost picked Headhunters because of Watermelon Man! There’s nothing like it. Herbie occupies a different plane of existence
Agree. If Stevie Wonder is made of music as McCartney says, Herbie would be the quantum music field.
I came here to say Future shock. I just listened to it on the drive home.
I really like Pretty. Odd. by Panic! At the Disco - it sort of reminds me of the later Beatles albums but is still unique.
It’s like they took they’re sucess as a pop rock band and used it to make a proper art piece.
The two i listened to most when i was young were Sgt Pepper and Dark Side of the Moon. Happy for the vinyl revival so my kids can experience the two sides of an album.
Here is mine.
Such a unique time when it came out. Electronic music was at peak experimental stage in the late 90’s. Kind of like B**ches Brew was the peak 60’s psychedelic experiment. This album was the perfect culmination of two masters of world music, psychedelic trance, and ambient music. Simon Posford is the absolute genius sound engineer at the peak of his game and Raja Ram was the old hippie wizard guiding him through realms unknown.
Wow I forgot about Shpongle! Haha cool memory, thanks for sharing!
I had a friend who was always on coke and acid and always was asking people to get spongled with them
Dr. Pnut, wherever you ended up, I hope you’re still spongle-ing.
Shpongle are a trip. Been years since i heard this, thanks
Thanks for this. Listened to about 20 mins and already found an album for sale which is now on its way.
Fingathing and The Big Red Nebula Band by Fingathing. Kind of a big beat/instrumental hiphop thing, the band already has a fairly unique sound but it stands out even in their output.
My Life In The Bush of Ghosts by David Byrne and Brian Eno.
Holy shit.
That’s what I was going to write. I don’t think people in 1981 knew what hit them.
The soundtrack for ‘The Catherine Wheel’ that Byrne did around the same time is pretty out there as well. ‘The Red House’ in particular blows me away with what he did with 1981 technology.
Cocteau Twins: Heaven Or Las Vegas
Extol’s “Burial”. Very smooth sounding record considering its bordering on Technical Death Metal.
Decapitated’s “Nihility”. I don’t know if drums have ever sounded more violent, tonally.
Suffocation’s “Pierced From Within”. Unique in that IMO that level of brutality and density has still never been matched.
Ulver’s “Nattens Madrigal”. Bees in a tin can.
Literally anything by Ad Nauseum.
Man, I could go on and on about this. So many metal records have one of a kind production.
Ulver’s “Nattens Madrigal”. Bees in a tin can.
Hilarious and accurate. And that one acoustic passage that makes you think “hey maybe there will be more like this”.
At least they gave us Kveldssanger to scratch that itch. 😆
Hell yeah. And Bergtatt, “ahh, just right”.
A beautifully written and produced record for sure.
Not only are none of those unicorn albums if you randomly select timestamps in most of them, you can’t tell you even jumped. I used to love this kind of music, but you’ve failed the assignment. The question was not to solicit albums you like.
Entombed - Left Hand Path is an example where it helped redefine a genre, and nothing before or since has sounded like it (because they innovated the ‘buzz saw’ guitar sound).
Pierced From Within didn’t define the sound of Brutal Death Metal?
Nattens Madrigal didn’t innovate for Raw Black Metal?
There’s not a single record that sounds like Nihility does, nor does anything sound like Burial both in production and composition.
This question is asking for subjective answers. There’s no such thing as failure as you so kindly put it, only difference of opinion.
Your suggestion that LHP is somehow more appropriate of a response ignores the fact that it did the exact same thing for Swedish DM as Suffocation did for BDM.
The crux of my question was “unicorn”.
So if I can listen to 100 random metal tracks and they all sound derivative, it misses the point. Reach for albums that actually are unique in your suggestions.
I used to be a serious metal fan, so I’m no hater, but let’s be real.
I researched and listened to much of what was suggested in the comment, it all sounds exactly the same as every other death/speed/thrash/grind that’s been done to death aha. At least with LHP there’s a sound that can never be created again due to the unique equipment they borrowed, and their special configuration thereof. I don’t even think LHP qualifies as an answer to my own thread but at least there was effort in that suggestion, and I’d put money down that you can’t reference another album that sounds like it, where I can post 100 for every in the parent comment.
Metal folks ITT seem to be profoundly missing the point of my post.
You’re telling me you can’t get a hold of an HM-2 and a Peavey Rage 158 or a Bandit? Three of my friends had the Rage 158 as their first amp and you can just buy an HM-2 on Reverb if you don’t know anyone that already owns one.
People have recreated the LHP sound countless times. Entombed is not the only band to ever do it.
reporting back; this album is lit.
In particular “Since I left you” and “Frontier Psychiatrist” are both jams.
This is one of my favorite albums ever.
If anyone was wondering, I believe nearly the whole album is made up of samples.
The Avalanches have a ton of other stuff. If you are a fan of Since I Left You, definitely check out the Gimix version which starts similar but has a lot of different tracks in it (including much more famous songs) https://youtu.be/X7i8bIhJY8c
I live under a rock, and I live in my own temporal warp field of mostly avante garde jazz works from 1940s-1990s
So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for sharing this, I am loving the hell out of it!
Radiohead—Amnesiac (especially the B-sides) Mr. Bungle—California ミラクルミュージカル—Hawaii: Part II (strongly related to Tally Hall, which is famous for their hit debut Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum) Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE (my preferred recording of this legendary unfinished album for its complete orchestration, but I very much get the argument that it just doesn’t sound right without the Beach Boys’ voices, so I also recommend giving the Dae Lime mix a try for its combination of original and deepfaked vocals)
Purplechick was always my favorite version of SMiLE.
Nothing is deep faked, it’s all taken from the original studio recordings.
