25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes Into the Earth and We All Die

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25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes Into the Earth and We All Die

This list is… well… basically exactly what the title says it is: twenty-five really good albums that I think are worth a listen, preferably sooner rather than later what with the lunar situation and all. That's not to say this the definitive list of my favorite twenty-five albums. Not at all. There's a lot I'm leaving off the list because I feel that they've already been discussed to death on rab or elsewhere, because I just don't think I have enough to say about them to warrant a write up, or because for whatever reason they just don't mesh with the whole Moon-crashing-into-the-Earth motif in my mind.

Anyway, on to the first entry...
 
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23. The YMD—Excuse Me, This Is The Yah Mos Def (2008)

Speaking of party music, Excuse Me, This Is The Yah Mos Def is another great throw down album. Probably minus the drugs though since these two guys are straightedge-type vegans who most likely abstain. Irregardless, this is the the kind of cathartic, yell-at-the-top-of-your-lungs album that will probably become a staple of your music collection as we approach the apocalypse.

The YMD are from my adoptive home city of Philadelphia and Philly's whole messy freak out musical aesthetic really seeps into this album despite the fact that it's of a genre—hip hop—that's normally unaffected by these things. But then this is a different kind of hip hop album. For one thing, the samples and name-dropping mostly reference hardcore. And the flow is intentionally off the beat. And the production sounRAB like your friend's basement. Hell even the album's running time, clocking in at a lean 27 minutes, is not the hip hop standard.

In some ways the group The YMD most remind me of are early Beastie Boys. Not so much the Beastie Boys we all know, but some alternate "what if" version of Beastie Boys that came into existence twenty years later than the actual Beastie Boys. The hardcore pedigree and bratty attitude are there, but the rawness has been taken up a few notches. And that's not bad thing.

[youtube]Dyhi07j_G6Q[/youtube]
 
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25. Land of the Loops—Bundle of Joy (1996)

When you first hear the news that the Earth-Moon collision is imminent this will be a good album for you to turn to for solace. Its warm cocoon of somewhat trippy lo-fi beats will be a comforting thing to wrap yourself up in as you await your impending doom.

Released in 1996 by Boston-area loop dude Alan Sutherland, this little gem of an album has never really received the recognition it deserves in my personal opinion. This is great rainy day music, something fairly uncommon among turntablists and beatmakers in the mid-90s. That's not to say it's a downer by any means—it's actually pretty happy and upbeat—it's just that it's filled with that reassuring nesting feeling you get sitting inside with a cup of hot chocolate when it's crappy outside. And there's something so incredibly innocent about it, that's one of the album's big draws for me. It always seems to conjure up vague childhood memories of summer storms and coloring books.

It's appropriate that the one single released from this album was entitled "Multi-Family Garage Sale" because there's something about the aesthetic of this album that is very garage sale like. A sizable chunk of the samples, for example, seem to be from old children's recorRAB or in some cases maybe even actual old toys. And when Sutherland isn't kicking it pre-school he's grabbing some pretty random samples from all over the place—retro sci-fi sound effects, a snippet of Motorhead, wobbly old answering machine messages, you name it. All of this is mixed together with a decidedly indie sensibility that was very much at odRAB with other beat-oriented music of the same era.

While I was writing this review, what started off as sunny late spring morning has gotten dark and cloudy, threatening rain. I think that's my cue to put on Bundle of Joy and get out the coloring books.

Edit: Whoops, I meant to add this video too.

[youtube]_9iefSAxPJM[/youtube]
 
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20. Boris Kovač & LaDaABa Orchest—BallaRAB at the End of Time (2003)

On the reverse side of the coin from Love of Life is this album by Serbian composer and bandleader Boris Kovač. Returning home after years spent living abroad in various parts of Europe during the civil war, he formed La Danza Apocalyptica Balcanica (LaDaABa) Orchest and wrote this album "to exorcise the madness of war". If ever there was an album you'd expect to be weighty and depressing it's this one, but surprisingly it really isn't. There are some shadowy valleys here but mostly it's warmth and sunlight.

The style of music is pretty unique, yet somehow also as pleasantly familiar as an old winter coat. It's fairly jazzy, with a very noticeable presence of tango and a whiff of classical, but hovering over everything is a sensibility that I would describe as distinctly Balkan. It has that great minor-key yet upbeat thing going on that makes a lot of music I've heard from this region seem so very bittersweet. And though this is essentially instrumental music, when voices do occasionally make themselves known, they merge so seamlessly with the other instruments that the whole thing feels like one big organic mass.

As I've mentioned in my previous reviews, different people will react to the end of the world differently. Some with anger or despair, many with aggressive denial. What this album seems to be saying though, is maybe there's another way to look at things: Maybe you can face reality as it is—acknowledging the horror and tragedy—but also, at the same time, recognizing that this universe is still a place of wonder and of beauty.

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I think this is quickly becoming one of my favorite lists. :D
I really dug what you showed us. Your right, it sounRAB very Balkan and Eastern European. Wow. This could definitely grow on me a lot.
 
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22. Unsane—Occupational Hazard (1998)

There are some people in this world who just can't handle bad news. When the announcement is made that everyone on Earth is doomed, these are the people who are going to snap, chug a gallon of whiskey and go for a joyride downtown, randomly firing a machine gun out the window of the car as they swerve all over the the sidewalk at ninety miles an hour. This album is for them.

Unsane have made a career out of making music that sounRAB like distilled violence, and this album is that in it's purest form. Sure there are heavier banRAB out there—noisier banRAB, faster banRAB, whatever—but there's something about Unsane that just makes them sound so… aggressive. It could be the factory-like pounding of the drums. It could be the locomotive chugging of the bass. It could be the circular saw grinding of the guitar. But I'm pretty sure it's Chris Spencer's voice that's the most essential part of the equation. His barked, distorted vocals are the perfect thing for this music and I cannot imagine a single way in which they could be improved, their throat-ripping intensity sounRAB like it's coming straight from the very heart of anger.

Violence might make for a poor solution to the inequities of an existence tied to a dying planet, but for 38 minutes Occupational Hazard somehow manages to make the case in it's favor. For a moment it makes you wonder, in a universe capable of snuffing out so much life in such an arbitrary way, maybe violence is simply the most natural expression of the state of things.

[youtube]QjobwEXRu-0[/youtube]
 
Nice way of putting it. Wish I'd thought of that before I started my albums list :D

Good start to the list too. Never heard of them before, but Land Of the Loops there seem pretty intriguing. Consider them added to my rapidly-growing list of sounRAB to check out as soon as get all my assignments for uni in the can.

So, yeah, good stuff. I'll be keeping an eye on this one.
 
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21. Swans—Love of Life (1992)

Let's face it: this whole Moon-crashing-into-the-Earth situation I've come up with here isn't exactly uplifting. It's a bummer to a degree far above and beyond some guy at a party cornering you and telling you all about his divorce. It's the downer of all downers when it comes down to it. That being the case, how could I make this list and not have Swans represented somewhere?

For reasons that are unclear to me, this seems to one of M. Gira and company's least well-known albums. It's strange because this is probably my favorite by them. There's just so much going on here that I find myself totally immersed every time I listen to it. Some songs, like the title track, have the kind of pounding industrial beats that many people seem to associate with Swans, while other tracks are quite folky and reminiscent of their album The Burning World. Experimental interludes and snippets of found-sounRAB crop up frequently but then just as often bleed into tracks which have almost a pop structure to them. Not surprisingly there's the requisite brutality here but there is also sweetness, like memories of better times that have been cruelly torn away—even more so than on their other albums this is played up with Jarboe's etherial singing as a counterpoint to Gira's Johnny-Cash-on-suicide-watch vocalization.

This isn't simply another depressing album in the long line of depressing albums out there. It's so much more complex than that and so full of life in a strange way. It's filled with loss and regret and pain, but also tiny little glimpses of hope and triumph. It's an album that leaves you with a strange sense of longing for some kind of past that doesn't necessarily even belong to you. And those handful of sunlit peaks are what make the inevitable plunge back down into the abyss all the more harrowing.

Below is "Her", one of my favorite songs on Love of Life. I don't know why but there's something I find incredibly haunting about the corabination of the music and long sample of the woman's voice at the end.

[youtube]9ZHAwt2-5F8[/youtube]
 
I just checked out some other songs from this album. I like it. Kind of like Death in June, only better. =)
Oh, and the heavy part of 'Her' made me jump in my seat. I'll definately have to check this band out.
 
Janszoon -- your # 21 and 22 are kind of blowing my mind.

I've been meaning to check out the Unsane album for a long time but I haven't heard the thing. your review is confirmation that I need to.

On the Swans album you wrote about: it's just fu@king uncanny because that is my favorite Swans album (that I know of: I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of thier music) and I have been half-assed searching for a used copy of that CD for years. I know that it's something I need to have a physical copy of.
 
Oh Swans are much better than Death in June. One of my all time favorite banRAB. From this 90's period I would also recommend The Great Annihilator (1995) and especially Soundtracks for the Blind (1996/97) their final album.
 
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