Essential Albums, Part Three! (Part 2)
We're back this week with the second half of our two-part season premiere! Eleven albums down, and eleven more to go, dear listener. What essential albums will be inducted into the illustrious TRAPPO Essentials Can(n)on this time? You'll have to tune in to find out! You can listen below, or find us on Apple, Google, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, Spotify, Spotify for Spot Masters, and Amazon, so choose your own adventure and let's have a little fun!
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That's it for now, dear listener. We'll be back next week to begin our annual celebration of the spooky season, also known as the most wonderful time of the year, so stay tuned for that. It's gonna be a real blast.
Thanks for listening!
An essential album for me is 2011's Moonlight Waltz from Theatres des Vampires. These Italian misfits have a clear dividing line in their history, and fans tend to come down pretty hard on one side or the other. Founding member and former lead singer Lord Vampire left the band in 2004, and former backing vocalist Sonya Scarlet became the group's new front person, and in the process their sound changed radically from more aggressive and black metal-inspired to something more gothic and romantic, but still infused with darkness. A lot of diehard fans HATE what happened to Theatres des Vampires after this change, and are always more than happy to express their extreme distaste with this new iteration of the band. Then there are people like me who prefer the more operatic sound of this modern era Theatres, and Moonlight Waltz is really the high water mark of this era. There's plenty of good music from the band after this album, don't get me wrong. But Moonlight Waltz will always hold a special place in my broken heart.
ReplyDeleteIt's in my fucking canon.
I think I'm the only person in the world who actually remembers "Musk At Dusk" from Irmin Schmidt. It's a kind of 1980's obscurity that slipped through the cracks. I honestly can't even remember how I first found the album. It's like one day, "Musk At Dusk" was just in my life, like it had always been there. I don't even know what you call this music. It sounds like pure 1980s soft rock on it surface, at least if you're not paying attention, but there's something sinister underneath that surface. There's cruelty and violence in the depths, just waiting to strike. It's all a subversive smoke screen, a way to smuggle in something creepy and experimental and quintessentially German. It's art rock, I guess. Haunting and strange. And I absolutely love it. The album artwork alone, which is a painting of a bunch of giraffe legs in high heels, is so memorably fucking weird. It's a little Bowie-esque, if that helps. "Musk At Dusk" is essential, TRAPPO. Please listen to it, so I don't have to feel so terribly lonely anymore. Somebody else needs to understand my love for Irmin Schmidt.
DeleteLEMONADE from Beyoncé. It’s essential in every sense of the word. Don’t ignore the queen.
ReplyDelete(A new commenter called "In The Realms Of Madness" has been trying to leave a comment on the blog for a few days now. Seven times in the past 60 hours I've received emails from Blogger telling me "In The Realms Of Madness" has left a comment here. And yet here I look, and there is no comment from "In The Realms Of Madness" to be found. The poster sent me a comment through Blogger asking why I'm censoring their comment. I'm not censoring their comment. Blogger just sucks. A lot. Here is your comment, "In The Realms Of Madness", presented unedited. I am sorry for your frustration. -D)
ReplyDeleteAllow me to share with you a few albums I consider essential.
"The Undoing" by Erotica. Erotica is a "band" that is more of a side-project from another group called Forgotten Ruin. It's an intensely creative fusion of black metal and dungeon synth. There's a killer off-kilter of Jethro Tull's "Cross-Eyed Mary" on here that is great.
"Árias Sanguíneas" from Sanguinária. A Finnish black metal opera based on the legends of Elizabeth Bathory. It's cool stuff. Who doesn't love vampiric black metal? Nobody I want to know.
"Another Time" from Femme Vanille. Female-fronted baroque pop from the Netherlands.
These are essential musics for me. Are they essential musics for you? Time shall tell. And time makes fools of us all.