in no order: OK COMPUTER -Radiohead ...AND JUSTICE FOR ALL -Metallica REIGN IN BLOOD -Slayer ANIMAL RIGHTS -Moby ("SILVER") -Starflyer 59 BIG LOADA -Squarepusher TRI REPETAE -Autechre THE WHITE STRIPES -The White Stripes ("IV") -Led Zeppelin NEVERMIND -Nirvana

OK COMPUTER I first heard Paranoid Android in the form of the video in a hotel in Montreal just after it came out. I was instantly paralyzed. This is the album that makes Radiohead more than human. In college, we all used to pass out on the floor in my buddy's dorm room at the end of the night, with the lights out, or a single black light atop the microfridge, zoning on this album. It's as varied as it is vast, the colors and temperatures ranging within pale tones between confusion and fascination, in straight-faced misery and wide-squinty bliss.

...AND JUSTICE FOR ALL My introduction to One was also thru the video, the world premier as I remember. I didn't know what to think. 10 years old, I was taken in by the black-and-white look of it. The bitter faces were void of emotion, but they bobbed together violently with a strange enthusiasm. Then I forgot about Metallica for a few years, until the Sandman phenomenon. But that has nothing to do with this.

I was in my first band in 1992. We were a two piece, I played guitar and Kris played drums. We listened to deep-underground California thrash bands primarily, and that was our influence. On an August afternoon Kris's mom bought him ...And Justice For All, and the whole world changed.

To this day, every time I listen to it, this album grabs me the same way that it did the first time I heard it. The sound is hard, clean, fast, and mean. The arrangements are spastically calculated, the guitar production is keen as hell (damn the naysayers), and the verses tell tales of conflict and woe, of insanity and extinction. Too sweet.

REIGN IN BLOOD I bought it in Auburn Maine, right before a 5-hour night time drive back to Vermont. I listened to it repeatedly for the whole trip. I like to say that Slayer conveys cold, calm terror. Technically flawless: complex and unpredictable.. and just plain bloody gratifying.

I don't want to spend too much time on Slayer, because chances are you've already made up your mind on this subject, either yay or nay, and I'd either be beating a dead choir or preaching to the horse.

But for those who agree concerning Reign...--

*sticks tongue out, makes devil horns sign

ANIMAL RIGHTS Ten Volumes couldn't say enough about the grandeur of this disc. There is so much mourning, euphoria, rage, abandonment, astonishment, serenity, and rapture throughout the experience that is this disc. It's a meaningful, purposeful journey to me, full of heartache and reward.

I first heard it at WJSC, the radio station at college. At that time, I only noticed the edgier numbers, and I missed MOBY on that tour by a small margin (that was the same semester that I passed up the MOBY show and sold my textbooks, both for the sake of buying drugs. damn!). But a couple of years later, this album bloomed late on me, and I have found it an indispensable staple since then.

(much more satisfying than either textbooks OR drugs)

("SILVER") Before Starflyer 59 became an indie rock sensation and stuff, their debut was the fourth release on now-indie-huge Tooth and Nail Records. I got it by T & N mail-order in January 1995 and listened to it in my discman on my paper route. The warmth of this music transported me above the mounting snow that hindered my way. That night, I stayed awake 'til dawn (on a school night) listening to the disc repeatedly.

Starflyer 59 has a beautiful sound that is often soothing and jagged in different layers playing at the same time.

It's about the dreamiest vibe I've ever experienced from any kind of music before, perhaps because of the way the lulling guitar sounds are placed amidst the heavy distorted ones. It's a mesmerizing blend. It reminds me of dreaming of flying.

BIG LOADA This is the first mad drum n' bass that I ever heard, and it is still my strongest influence when I produce. The incessant milli-second snappy, breakneck drum editing varies impossibly quickly, the samples chopped and bent 100 times in the blink of an eye.

My first days learning web design consisted of days on end of stolen internet time at a local college computer lab, listening to this Squarepusher disc for 8 hours at a time. Its tracks put me in a focused, fascinated state of mind where new things come alive.

TRI REPETAE Autechre's 1996 double album of down-tempo IDM and ambient. I've spent many, many nights sleeping, days dreaming, eves driving, and more while tripping-slow thru this one.

on one hand, it's very exact and deliberate, promoting "busy"-ness & contemplation, on the other, compelling and huge with emotional implications, slow-painting beautiful, beautiful scenery for the sour spots on your soul.

I found it surprising that computers could be so warm. Autechre has also been another significant influence to my music.

THE WHITE STRIPES This album is where I coined the phrase "Dirty Dirty Candy," to describe the sound. This disc is so full of spontaneous-sounding quirks, it just sounds like it's happening for the first damn time, every time. The White Stripes' take on the blues is very unique and never gets tiresome (two things that are hard to say about blues).

Many of the lyrical topics seem quite non-descript, sometimes shrouded in metaphors and apparent silliness, but they still largely manage to come across as personal anthems.

Jack White sounds like a supernatural cartoon persona; Meg is deliberate and spritely, she plods like a girl, and there's no one who could do it better.

"Yeah Monkey/Are ya seein' red now? Yeah Monkey/Jumpin' on the bed now."

Rough and sweet. Dirty, dirty candy.

("IV") This album was my first exposure to Led Zeppelin (other than the Stairway backmasking crusaders). I heard it in summer camp at age 13, and Led Zeppelin is still my favorite band. These songs are timeless.

This is another one that I pretty much can't tell you anything that you don't already know, but I will say that The Battle of Evermore seem to tell me everything I need to know about everything in the universe when it's playing.

NEVERMIND During Christmas vacation 1991, a friend from my neighborhood said that I had to hear this band "that everyone's listening to." I do believe that the next few years of listening to this album have given it the honor of being the album to which I have listened more than any other, even after listening to it quite a bit less often in the decade since. It is a joy to spin it again, though-- there are so many layers of feelings and things conveyed, there's always 10 new things to discover every time.

This disc is enjoyable to me because it's the Kurt Cobain so much unlike himself-- it's a dynamic character that he's playing on these tracks, particularly because of what the sonic production did to cleanse and drive it. Or maybe it's the other way around, and this is when we see the real him. Either way, it's the sharp disparity we see here that I like.

The thing that I like most about this album is it makes me feel 13 again. I'm not going to give you the "changing of the guard" speech, nor even indicate that I agree with it, but this album is definitely my generation's Kennedy Assasination-- everybody remembers where they were when they first heard it. At least I do (and hey-- it seems much more meaningful to me when I say that everyone does).

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I just reallized for the first time yesterday. I was Sunday-driving in the fleeting warmth of early fall, and it hit me that all of the joy that I was feeling was coming from the music.

I know that you've probably had this experience a million times before.. but I guess I've always felt any kind of music as either a fitting soundtrack for whatever I was experiencing, or a structural thing to admire (or criticize) based on its technical merits.

I'm a junkie for the this-has-never-happened-to-me-before thing, so I know it when I see it.

I enjoy music immensely. outside of clinical survival needs and loved ones, it has always been the most important thing in my life. but this was something new. I felt, for 7 minutes or so, like life was a blank page, and the music was the substance that was written on it.

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