Jon Tells You What to Think, Installment 2

(Installment 1)

Yeah it's been a few weeks, but here are numbers 20 through 16 of my authoritative best albums of all time.

20: Unsound Methods - Recoil

Recoil is the solo project of a former member of Depeche Mode, Alan Wilder. The music is moody electronica, with guest appearances from all sorts of interesting vocalists. He only has a handful of albums out, the last one was in 2000, and he's done nothing since, which is a pity because he's got a completely unique sound, and a hell of a lot of talent. Unsound Methods is probably his strongest album, it opens with 'Incubus' which uses quotes from 'Apocalypse Now' as lyrics, and the eerie music perfectly evokes that movie. Another highlight is 'Luscious Apparatus', where a female vocalist delivers deadpan a story of a torrid fucked up sexual encounter between two people with some unusual fetishes. The climax, which involves her screaming 'sex' over and over while the most fucked up sounding guitar you ever heard screeches away in the background. If you've ever heard it, you won't forget it.

19: Mezzanine - Massive Attack

Well everyone's probably heard this one. I like the whole thing, even 'Exchange', but the standout track is definitely 'Group Four', which at eight minutes is still too short.

18: California - Mr. Bungle

Their least insane album, I can usually get away with putting this on at a party without people complaining too much. As with all their stuff, it's a mix of surf rock, electronica, swing, traditional middle eastern music and metal, but this time round a little less heavy on the screaming and white noise, and a little more focused on melodic songwriting, but with enough of the former style to keep things interesting. Also contains the saddest song ever written, 'Pink Cigarette'.

17: The Fragile - Nine Inch Nails

It probably shouldn't have been a double album but 40% of this album is brilliant and almost all of the rest is pretty good. Here Trent Reznor moved away from the tight aggressiveness of 'The Downward Spiral' and made a moody sprawling epic of an album. It suffers a bit from the first disc being much stronger than the second, but it's worth listening to the entire thing, as Trent's biggest fetish is making a cohesive album where every track fits into the album as a whole.

16: OK Computer - Radiohead

Everyone's heard this one too. It's their most successful album, and for good reason. Every track strikes just the right balance between accessibility and whacked out experimentalism (you know, I hate the term 'experimental', maybe it applies to some out there neo-classical stuff, but making a horrible noise with a guitar is an experiment only in the sense that you're experimenting to see if anyone will like it. In the case of 'OK Computer' the result was a definite yes). I'm still surprised that 'Paranoid Android' was a big hit, considering it's 6 minute running time, erratic structure, guitar freak outs and of course that weird video, but there you go. And of course the record's huge success made the band bitter and disillusioned enough to produce the incredible 'Kid A'.