William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops (2002)
Sometimes the thing that draws you to an album is the same that keeps you away. The Disintegration Loops started off, not as an album, but as an attempt Basinski made to digitally archive a set of recently rediscovered ambient tape loops that he’d recorded in 1982. But as the music rolled through the playback head, the tape began to fall apart.
“The iron oxide particles were gradually turning to dust and dropping into the tape machine, leaving bare plastic spots on the tape, and silence in the corresponding sections of the new recording. I was recording the death of these melodies […] The music had turned to dust and was scattered along the tape path, yet the essence and memory of the life and death of each unique melody had been saved, recorded to a new medium, remembered.” - William Basinski
And if that was the whole story, it wouldn’t have made the list. As interesting as the decaying loops are conceptually, I might not even have heard of the album. But that’s not the whole story.
The rest of the story goes something like this: as Basinski finished the recording, as the last loop lost its last note in his Brooklyn apartment, two planes crashed into the towers of the World Trade Center. So as many lost their lives and more ran for theirs, as the country watched on their TVs, Basinski brought his new recording up to his roof and played it for the first time as he watched with his neighbors as the buildings burned and smoldered a mile across the East River.
That’s some heavy stuff to have in your EPK. As soon as I read about it, I knew I had to hear it, but once I had it, I never found myself in the right place to play it. I guess there aren’t that many times where I’m in the mood to relive 9/11 through music, and even though everything I’ve read about the album talks about how beautiful the music is without all the context, there’s so much to chew on with the story itself, so much poetry in its very existence, that its hard to forget and hard to imagine how the music could top it.
So I leave it in my iTunes library, unplayed, but not ignored. I love this album, but I might not ever hear it.
Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977)
Yeah, really.
I know it’s on a thousand “best albums of all time” lists, I’m sure it’s in the 1001 recordings I have to listen to before I die, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it inspired some of my favorite artists to make some of my favorite music, but here’s the thing: It’s just not an album you sit back and listen to as a music hobbyist.
You’re supposed to live this thing. You’re supposed to hear it and immediately buy a spiked leather jacket, put wood glue in your hair, and learn how to sew patches on to every piece of clothing you own. One listen, and your next few years should consist exclusively of getting hammered, cursing at your parents, and screaming along to “Anarchy in the U.K.” and “God Save the Queen”, and I just know I’m not going to do any of that.
I’m going to lean back in my comfy little chair, think for a bit about all the music that might not have been without the album and how Odd Future might possibly maybe be the Sex Pistols of our time, put a track or two on an oft updated but rarely used playlist for DJ-ing, and I’m going to completely miss the point. I’ll have become precisely the sort of pompous and contented asshole that I assume the album is rallying against, and that just seems disrespectful.
But I still hold out hope. Somenight, when I’m out with the boys drinking more than than the me of the next morning would recommend, someone will throw it on in our slightly swerving car and I’ll get it. I’ll think, “yeah, fuck the reserved asshole I’ve become!”, and yell, “this is the new me!” I’ll throw my phone out the window and punch whomever’s next to me just for the shit of it. That’s about the best I can hope for and I’d rather hold out for that than feel like more of a pretentious twit than I already do.
Common - Finding Forver (2007)
Like a lot of hip-hop fans of the nineties, I used to love Common. Resurrection had a permanent spot in my CD case for as long as I had a CD case, Like Water for Chocolate was a heavy rotator throughout high school, and I might be the only person I know who legitimately enjoyed Common’s attempt at psychedelic hip-hop on Electric Circus, but, when it comes to Finding Forever, there’s one minor thing that keeps me from pressing play, and it’s not that “Finding Forever” sounds more like a how to book on Tantric sex than a rap album (though that certainly doesn’t help) …
It’s that fucking cover.
I know I’m not supposed to judge a book and all that, but, seriously, what is this? Did he get signed to a record label run by Scion? Was Orbit gum having a clearance on unused promo art? I think I’d actually be relieved to find out they just used a PowerPoint template because at least that would mean no one put in any effort whatsoever. But, god, even the photo of Common is ridiculous. Are the black lines around his head supposed to be a monk’s hood or a pimp’s wig? Add the Lily Allen guest appearance to the mix and it’s obvious this is a massive sellout move engineered to put me off and pull in children and I’m never going to listen to this so I might as well delete it right?
Here’s the problem: one track produced by J. Dilla (arguably my favorite producer), eight produced by Kanye West (arguably my favorite producer), and guest appearances from both D’Angelo (arguably kidnapped) and DJ Premier (arguably my favorite producer). These are each heavyweights. I listen to albums that only one of these guys has co-produced a track on. I can’t just delete it. I mean, I already put the producer credits in the composer field of the ID3 tag, and there’s just bound to be at least a nugget or two of gold on here. I must listen to it at some point.
But on the other hand …
Eghck.
The Flaming Lips - Zaireeka (1997)
So here’s one that I really do want to listen to. Like, I’m actually excited about it, but the question is: Will I? Really? Am I ever actually gonna make this happen?
For those of you who don’t know, The Flaming Lips released a four disc album, and that’s not the crazy part. The crazy part = you have to play them at the same time on four different stereos to hear it in full.
Mind blown. Eight channel sound! It’s brilliant! Groundbreaking! Visionary! Logistically infuriating!
Has an album ever asked for as much prep-work on your part? This makes that time I synced The Dark Side of the Moon with The Wizard of Oz on the MGM lion roar while stoned seem like a cakewalk. Part of the concept is that you have to listen to it with friends in order to get it in sync, thus necessitating a social experience, which would be easier if everybody I knew who had a modicum of interest in making this happen hadn’t already had their Zaireeka party in college and reported back with a unanimous and less than inspiring “it was kind of neat … kind of.” If they’d all come back with spinning hypnosis eyes while repeating “Ich bin ein Zaireeka” then I might have the motivation, but with things as they are, and the fact that the Flaming Lips put out a 10th anniversary DVD with a fifth track of sound that you have to play through your TV (we’re up to ten channels of sound so far), it’s just hard to see it happening. My best chance at this point is to go hang out on a college campus with a big bag of weed until I get an invite, and that’s pretty creepy.
But I can’t delete it. I love weird sound stuff. I’m the kind of guy who goes to La Monte Young’s Dream House, a Tribeca apartment filled with a bunch of speakers blasting out of phase sine waves at you from different directions, more than once and buys a ticket to Transformers 3 with the intention of keeping my eyes closed the whole time so I can focus on, not the incredible dialogue, but the ridiculous sound design. In a big way, this is precisely my cup of tea. So I have to hold out hope even though I think it’s pretty hopeless. Le sigh.
Various Artists - Living Bridge (2008)
I should have done more than listen to this album — I should have been involved in it somehow. I should have been at the release party or made a music video for a song or gotten tossed an advance promo or gone out to lunch with one of the bands or even just told some friends about this awesome compilation that was being recorded right next door to the Olde English office that I spent almost every day at for two years. Maybe it’s already clear, but this is an album I haven’t listened to simply out of guilt and shame.
Living in New York was hard for me. I enjoyed it and loved it and bragged about it and everything, but I always had a sense of not being New York enough for New York. I had a feeling that there were always twenty amazing parties or gallery openings or secret concerts happening just around every corner that I would have been invited to if I’d just been a little more outgoing. Some people find that invigorating; I found it dispiriting.
When we got an office in the industrial section of Williamsburg, Brooklyn (I’m from Virginia, so I always have to make sure people don’t think I’m talking about the colonial Williamsburg of field trips past), I had an idea that it would make us a little more “legit” as New Yorkers, by which I mean it would fulfill the stereotype that everyone had about living in Williamsburg at that time, but that was also kind of true. It would make us part of a community of independent creative types who made music and movies, had BBQs on roofs and threw parties in lofts, but it didn’t. The fact is that you have to be socially ambitious to get involved with those sorts of things, and that was/is one of the things I had/have serious problems with. As time wore on, our office made me feel less like a potential member of that world and more like a fake who was there only by the circumstances of geography. I still remember Missy Popadiuk explaining to me what a poser was in junior high and thinking “oh shit, that’s me.” Being there brought that feeling back and nothing encapsulated my feeling of missing out what was happening in my own backyard more than finding out about this album.
Black Dice, Deerhunter, Blood on the Wall, and other Brooklyn bands of the like that filled this compilation were precisely the sort of acts I tended to load my iPod up with and mark my calendar for, so finding out that they’d all made exclusive material for a compilation of note excited me. But as I read more about it and learned where it’d been recorded, that same old feeling of missing out and failing to be present and being false started to haunt me again. I’d put the album on my iPod with every intention of giving it a good listen, but when I scrolled by it, I wouldn’t stop, and when it came up on shuffle, I’d skip forward. It’s specter loomed larger and larger, and, eventually, I stopped pretending that I wanted to listen to it, but I could never get rid of it because it was still everything I’d wanted to be.
I live in L.A. now, and it’s less of a problem. I recently threw it on my iPhone in case I’m over all that now. We’ll see.
