u/Lukazimir

5/5 (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

In my top 5 albums of all time, Nick Drake’s Pink Moon is in my eyes as close to perfection as an album can get. His predecessor “Bryter Layter” saw him expanding his sound with more orchestration, but Pink Moon opted to go the opposite route, stripping basically everything that isn’t guitar and Nick’s voice away. The only other instrument that appears is a piano on the opening title track.

The album is produced in an extremely intimate way, everything feels super warm and close which helps with the emotional potency of the album. Nick Drake is often a symbolic and vague lyricist but there are some devastating, more direct moments on this record like “Parasite” where he likens himself to a parasite leeching off of the people in his life.

And talk about a stacked tracklist. It’s a slim 28 minutes and every single song here is fantastic. They often seem simple being just guitar and vocals, but there is actually a lot of interesting, slightly-jazzy structure to a lot of the songs. If I had to pick a top 3 songs though I’d go with “Things Behind the Sun” which is the longest track on the album, “Free Ride” and “Parasite”.

A lot of discussion around Nick Drake gets clouded in the “mystique” of his reclusive life and tragic suicide. But the man had a pretty much perfect catalogue of music and I feel it’s worth celebrating that, even if he never lived to see his music get the recognition it deserved.

Shot with Ilford HP5 Plus film on a canon EOS 650.

Wasn’t expecting great results with this roll of film as I’ve been in a bit of a dry spell recently but actually had a few great shots in there. This one being my favorite.

5/5 (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️).

For my money, Dead Kennedys are the best punk band. As a sign of how much I love their music, I gave this album a 5 and it’s not even my favorite Dead Kennedys record (for me it’s their second album “Plastic Surgery Disasters.”) Of course, frontman Jello Biafra is a good lyricist and great satirist, which you can see on opener “Kill the Poor” where he plays the part of a policy-maker proposing the idea of just nuking poor neighborhoods so the wealthy can have more space.

But what really puts the Dead Kennedys above other punk bands for me is their rhythm section, where many punk bands are (albeit intentionally) loose and sloppy players, Dead Kennedys has a tight and precise style of playing where the members are always locked the hell in. There are a lot of great little bass riffs or short guitar solos to find here.

As for the tracklist, it’s all killer no filler. Whether that be the big songs “Holiday in Cambodia” and “California Über Alles” or Greta deep cuts like “Chemical Warfare” or “when ya get drafted.” There just isn’t a dull moment to be found here, and it’s also paced extremely well so it glides by very quick.

Also regarding California Über Alles, the version on this album is actually not my favorite version of this song. That honor goes to “we’ve got a bigger problem now” off of their “In God We Trust Inc.” EP which reworks the song to be about Ronald Reagan and is even more intense/angry.

Bitches Brew

5/5 (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️).

In the late 60’s Miles Davis went electric and it nearly ended the world. jazz purists were enraged, they almost caused a nuclear apocalypse over it. But it was worth it, because fusion era Miles Davis put out some of the best records of all time, and among those is this hour-fourty-six behemoth, Bitches Brew. The songs here are large, expansive jams (the title track being 26 minutes long) which are demanding listens but also deeply rewarding with all the detail underneath. This is one of those albums where every listen I find something new. And Davis’s trumpet playing on this record is fantastic, there is so much power behind basically every note he plays on here, same goes for the rest of the ensemble that worked on this album.

And as a bonus, this has one of the best album covers of all time as well which fits perfectly with the surreal, psychedelic vibe of the album.

Favorite parts are Steel Ball Run, Jojolion and Stone Ocean. I am also a known Pucci enjoyer.

Also I’ve always wondered, would having 4 balls make wearing pants super uncomfortable? Especially if they’re tighter pants that aren’t designed to have that much going on.

5/5 (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️).

Master of Puppets is pretty much the perfect thrash metal record and the best album in Metallicas catalogue. One of those albums where not a second of its runtime feels wasted. The intro track “Battery” is basically a perfect tone setter as it starts with only a guitar before the instrumentation fully kicks in, and damn even hearing this song as many times as I have it still hits just as hard. Another favorite of mine on here is “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” which is one of the slower songs on the album, but the build it goes through is incredible. and the closer “Damage Incorporated” is probably my favorite Metallica song. it really is one of those albums like Abbey Road or Dark Side of the Moon that’s just an undeniable classic.

And though Metallica has spent the past 30ish years at this point being a hollow shell of its former self, those first four albums are still all essential listens.

Also movie recommendations are always welcome! Been trying to watch more stuff lately.

5/5 (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️).

Tago Mago by the influential Krautrock band Can is probably one of the least accessible albums on this generator and its reception is likely quite divisive on here if I had to guess. But I love this album. For the sake of this review, the seven tracks here can easily be split into two halves.

The first half (which encompasses the first four tracks) is very groove-based and jammy, where the drums really feel like the main character of the music. Especially on the 18 minute highlight of the album “Halleluwah” which has this locked in groove that slowly builds in intensity in its first 6 or so minutes before dropping out and then building up again. I also love the track “Oh Yeah” which has this somewhat eerie groove followed by backwards vocals.

It’s the second half of the album however (the final three tracks) where I imagine this album really loses a lot of people. As the music from this point on kinda just abandons structure entirely. It begins to feel like the musical equivalent of a bad acid trip. Whether that be the noisy drone of “Aumgn” or the atonal keyboards of “Peking O.” And these are for sure not songs that I’ll put on at public events or that I listen to in isolation from the album regularly, but they are still fascinating and sonically engrossing experiments from a band that was pushing the limits of what rock at the time could sound like.

One of those albums where I can completely understand how someone would despise it, but I personally find myself completely on-board with its uncompromising vision every time I listen to it.