While re-listening to removed Brew tonight it occurred to me, there’s never been anything that sounds quite like it since, and there never will be again.
What are your favorite unicorn albums?
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‘Mirrored’ by Battles (2007).
They’ve got a mostly traditional setup and instrumentation, but the sounds they make are really strange and unique. Sometimes the words of the songs aren’t real words. It’s just really out there, from start to finish.
Most albums by Mamaleek. They change up the sound on each record, and still stay unlike anyone else. Check out ‘Diner Coffee’ and ‘Vida Blue’.
Crash Injury Trauma by isolrubin.bk. I once read a review stating the album was “music for binge drinking”.
Neil Young, Le Noise is amazing on a good system. The sub sub octave acoustic efffect is very unique.
Protomen volume I - they purposely went against arbitrary recording “laws”
Rush-2112, moving pictures
Also a rare one: Burlap to Cashmere, ,is there anybody out there. Its soooo clearly mixed. Hard to find any in depth info on this album.
Igorrr - Spirituality and Distortion.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Flying Microtonal Banana
Lemon Jelly - lemonjelly ky
The Flashbulb - Opus At The End Of Everything
Endtroducing by DJ Shadow
It’s his inaugural album and there’s never been anything quite like it. Even his follow up albums, with his unique sound, feel a bit different than this one (not in a bad way, but I don’t think they meet your unicorn criteria).
Also, I think this easily goes in my top ten albums list.
I never heard of this artist or album before, so far I’m 1/4 through the listening and digging it, thanks for posting
Want to save this thread for later, may as well name a couple as well
The Faceless - Planetary Duality. Technical death metal album that found an outstanding balance between technically-impressive musicianship, interesting compositional intricacacies, and raw primal brutality. Nothing scratches that itch like this album does for me. And if you’re into drums, Alex Rudinger’s drumming in Xenochrist is wholly and entirely inhuman. The dude is an octopus trapped in a man’s body. I’d recommend watching his Xenochrist drum playthrough video if you’re particularly interested
Infected Mushroom - Converting Vegetarians. These two guys are absolute wizards of music production, and this album showcases their insane ability to bring out such colorful personalities from their meticulously crafted synth leads, through gradual and dramatic evolution… Which they usually do in a familiar psy-trance setting. But the “chill side” half of this album accomplishes this wonderfully in a unique, much more relaxed, low-tempo style that I’m genuinely struggling to find words to describe
This is one of my favorite albums ever.
If anyone was wondering, I believe nearly the whole album is made up of samples.
The Avalanches have a ton of other stuff. If you are a fan of Since I Left You, definitely check out the Gimix version which starts similar but has a lot of different tracks in it (including much more famous songs) https://youtu.be/X7i8bIhJY8c
reporting back; this album is lit.
In particular “Since I left you” and “Frontier Psychiatrist” are both jams.
Porcupine Tree - In Absentia
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Nothing sounds quite like itNatural Snow Buildings - The Dance of the Moon and the Sun. It’s a mix of drone, post-rock, and folk that is unlike anything I’ve ever heard (NSB’s other albums have similarities, but this one stands out to me)
Honorable mentions:
Boris - Flood
Agalloch - Ashes against the grain
Grace Cathedral Park - In the evenings of regret
Cake’s first album Fashion Nugget is the kind of unique that we rarely see twice.
The first, like, 5 albums by They Might Be Giants are unique in their own ways. Just different blends of wackiness and musical sophistication, it’s sublime.
They are such a blast! Their children’s albums are great, too; I played them all the time in English classes.
I grew up with them, and to this day I’ve never found anyone who quite matches that sound. Just pure musical creativity.
Let’s put in Joker’s Daughter - The Last Laugh. The track Lucid particulary is exemplary of what puts the corn on this uni. A Danger Mouse joint.
