I wouldn't exactly say this is my favorite album, but it does capture a certain loose organic sound that I look for in all music.

i've got that record, I bought it because it got quite a few good reviews, i thought it was pretty dull though.

For its ecletic mix of styles - It's the one album I can think of that, for whatever reason I want to listen to music, there will be something on it that satifies that need:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA240_.jpg

Lil' Wayne - Tha Carter III.

I can answer the "About You When You Were 14" question easily, that would be Led Zeppelin I which I bought used for a dollar at the comic book store I hung out in.

The actual thread subject has me stumped however. I don't think there is such a record. My favorite album, period, is Bad Moon Rising, but obviously there are many types of music I love that it doesn't touch on in the slightest. Ditto my second favorite album Atlantis by Sun Ra. Certainly the passion and originality that made those two albums possible is something I look for in all music, but they are both highly atonal in scope so how could I say they embody what I love about the early works of either Elliott Smith or the Cocteau Twins (or despite the connection SY have created for themselves, The Carpenters)?

Music too often gets mistaken for a language. It isn't one though. It's many different languages actually.

You know what? As soon as I'd posted the above, I realized that the Velvet Underground & Nico is as close as it gets. It's got "European Son" and "Sunday Morning" on the same album, which does cover both extremes in absolute perfection. Of course it doesn't touch on what I love about Mutabaruka or Fela Kuti in the slightest, but it does come closest to embodying the whole range of my favorite music of any record likely to be out there.

How is music many different languages?

thats a great album. waaay better than most ofthe other NNCK that ive heard

There's probably no one album that embodies everything I love about music. But these three come close:

Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St., and Safe as Milk

Bowery Electric - Beat

To me, this is just a perfect record. It's got all that I truly love about music ... shoegaze guitars, ambient soundscapes, lush vocals, hypnotic blurred atmospheres, beats ... I can't precisely explain how much I love this album.

^^^that sounds great!

If there is a hell, and if that's where I'm going, this would be the soundtrack.

to each his own i guess.
mine would include Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

ONe album? not possible. NIRVANA's In Utero is one of my favorite albums...along with Daydram Nation and Kill Yr Idols/Confusino is Sex. After that....hmm..I'd probably say.............................I don't know.


Oh RADIOHEAD's Ok Computer and Pearl Jam's No Code.

this thread has stumped me for days, it's such a hard collection to have an all encompassing answer, anything from Half Japanese, Sleater-Kinney, Helium, SY just makes it frustrating

then again why have i been spending this much time devoted to thinking of this in the first place

Owls. self-titled from 2001. A flawless album. If you haven't heard it please check it out.

If I knew of such an album I would never listen to anything else.

weirdly, its phoenix - Its Never Been Like That

for no other reason, than it really is the only kind of music that makes me do the skippy happy dance moves while I'm walking, no matter what mood I might be in before it comes on the ipod.

funny what music can do to ya.

This one's too tough for me...

Tim Buckley - Dream letter live in London 1968

Because it's perfect and so beautiful.

I'm not so sure now. What do I love about music? I guess it could be melody, but then again, melody isn't what attracts me to black metal or Einstuerzende Neubauten. I remember there was a thread awhile ago which was about dissonance and melody, and someone said they just like sound. So I guess I love music for its sound(s).

These were the first few that popped into my head...

http://northernlion.files.wordpress....pg?w=300&h=293

Television Personalities - And don't the kids just love it

Every track a gem.

I actually thought I'd explained that in my post, albeit through implication rather than direct statement.

It has to do with why I find this topic impossible to actually completely answer. One album can't embody everything I love about music, because music means many different things and sometimes they are flat out contradictory.

One thing I love about music is perfect melody, another is dissonant noise, another is rhythm, another is minimalism, but then sometimes complexity can be very interesting too...

What makes Curtis Mayfield sound amazing to me is nothing like what makes Iannis Xenakis equally so. The music of John Fahey is not of the same language as the music of Public Enemy. I'm not even sure that the music of John Fahey's later work is of the same language as his acoustic folk albums.

When you use mathematics to convey meaning, there is really only one language you can use, though it is infinitely far reaching. Despite what John Williams and the director of Close Encounters of the Third Kind may have tried to say about music as a universal language, even if you keep the aliens out of the picture and just stay on Earth, there are often more musical languages in even one culture than spoken dialects.

In an effort to come as close to answering the topic question as possible I decided on The Velvet Underground & Nico because it somehow cohesively runs much of the gamut of what I love about music. Closer than anything else I could think of anyway. There are still languages it doesn't speak, however.

bee thousand

Ah well yeah, you did. Heh. This is just an interesting topic and you have a good way with words.

You pretty summed up why I feel this question completely unanswerable

nels cline trio's chest

the perfect mixture of a sonic youth aesthetic with a jazz and improvisors sensibility. an epic cd that ranges from atmospheric noise to jazz balladry to sonic youth rocking to free swing etc...

in all honesty i would a totally different musician had i never heard nels and this cd.

there is no singing or rapping on this so its missing those elements so.....

tara jane oneil - tjo tko

beautiful guitar playing and writing.

something from wu tang probably....

raekwon only built for cuban links

Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure

Definitely the edgiest pop music in the early 70's. I consider it Prog-Pop. It shimmers and rocks at the same time

James Blonde chose Bad Moon Rising.