Few debut albums have, since their initial release date, so easily defined themselves as a milestone and game-changer for a genre in the way of In the Court of the Crimson King. The record, released in October 1969 by British outfit King Crimson, is an…
How lucky would one be to have the opportunity to listen to Definitely Maybe while remaining blissfully ignorant of the very inflated egos of both Liam and Noel Gallagher? Their public personas make it rather difficult to conceive of Oasis as not just nobodies,…
The accolades that critics, fans, and lay listeners alike have bestowed upon Blue Lines since its release in 1991 — being branded as the album that spawned trip hop, becoming a staple of UK dance music, and being regarded as one of the greatest…
Black Sabbath are generally credited as the leading pioneers of heavy metal music, and rightfully so. They took some definite cues from outfits like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Blue Cheer, but their iconic use of the musical tritone, sinister lyrical content, tuned-down guitars,…
There never was a romance quite like it: beat poets/star-crossed lovers Exene Cervenka and John Doe form a little rock band with guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D. J. Bonebrake — a list of names straight out of a Charles Bukowski novel — then…
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is a masterpiece. The inception of old-school rap bore a political consciousness (Grand Master Flash’s The Message), as did the defining new school record…
Steve Albini boasts a legacy that is at once massive and, at the same time, pretty fucking stupid. The albums he worked on as a sound engineer comprise a significant portion of what’s considered the alt/indie rock “canon” (or whatever you would like to…
“I love you / you pay my rent.” These words, sung in a chorus on the 1987 classic Actually, are probably the sharpest distillation of the uncompromising aesthetic and sociopolitical concerns which Pet Shop Boys were steeped in at this early point in their…
What’s the difference between music and noise? Besides general semantics, the two terms are perceived to create something of a dichotomy in relation to one another; often when trying to pass critical judgment on the sonic qualities of a recorded piece, there’s a tendency…
After writing the early blueprint for ’90s R&B, Mary J. Blige laid out her own musical foundations on 1994’s My Life. The influence of hip-hop began to seep into R&B by the end of the ’80s — a period that soon saw Bell Biv…
