My Life In Records

This album came to me in a time of need. In middle school I was pretty much listening to only nu-metal bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit, and I was certain it was the best music on the planet. Terrible. Once the internet came into my life, I remember perusing the web for music, and I accidentally came upon the Björk song 'Hunter.' Everything changed immediately; I had never heard anything like it before. I researched the hell out of her, and within a week rode my bike to the nearest Tower Records to pick up Homogenic. Vespertine was the only album they had in stock at the time, so I bought it instead, not wanting to come home empty-handed. It was a great starting-point for me, because it took me SO far outside the loud, obnoxious world of pop metal. My listening habits soon became much more isolated and introspective from that point on, and music officially became the love of my life. Homogenic followed within a few months, but I guess I can only list one of those two albums here :)

Another incredible album that thrust me into the world of electronic music. My friend Hank May showed it to me on the last night of school in eighth grade. We were set to perform some jazz thing that evening, but managed to escape our responsibilities of setting up for a few minutes, and I distinctly remember listening to 'Brand New Colony' on his first-generation iPod and just LOSING it. I was grabbing him over and over, saying that there was nothing more that I wanted in life than to be able to make music like that. To this day I think it’s still the best album to show people who feel like electronic music is a cold and soulless world.

I don't know what it is about this album; circumstance and timing certainly played a role in making it such a part of my life. I’ve never been able to put my finger on what exactly I love about it so much, but I know that I listened to it incessantly for almost an entire year. It was the soundtrack to my bus rides in ninth grade, along with my next pick…

This is the album that I’ve listened to more than any other. It became this huge, sweeping romantic soundtrack for my early high-school years. The bus ride that I took to school in ninth grade would take me through Topanga Canyon and along the PCH every morning around 7:00am, and when we were lucky we could catch the sun rising over the ocean out our windows. Some days we'd even see dolphins swimming with the sunrise – no joke. Details fit perfectly into how absurdly gorgeous those mornings felt: easy on the ears and easy on my soul. LYFE.

Way too epic. I cried way too much the first couple of times that I listened to it all the way through; 'Glósóli' still gives me the shivers. Hearing this at a young age was such a blessing, because my teenage emotions were still so easily affected – I just couldn't deal with how huge it made me feel sometimes. I actually at one point made up an entire film that played through in my head while I listened to this album. It’s a transcendent experience.

My favourite album of all time. There are just too many things that I love about it that I was forced to rule out everything else. The musicianship, the production, the timbre of Matt Berninger's voice, the LYRICS.... Goddammit! The images that the lyrics portray on this album are just so intense; so accurate and poetic. I could go deeper and deeper with every listen. It was a miracle to have seen them play The Troubadour in L.A. while they were touring Alligator. I was the underdeveloped fanboy in a shirt that said 'Mr. November' on the front, dancing my ass off, ignoring all the motionless Angelenos around me. I desperately needed to show the guys in the band how much I cared for their music. Hopefully we've all been that person at one point or another :)

One of the most relaxing albums I know of – and one of the most inventive bedroom recordings as well. I couldn't get away from it for a long, long while. It totally washes over you, and you get trapped in the band’s weird and beautiful world. You Forgot It In People is also incredible, and just as deserving of a 'favourite album' tag, but I am much more in tune with the simple, understated sound of Feel Good Lost. I wanted to list them both on here actually, but I only have ten spots and I think this one is more important. (Harrumph!)

Beautiful and cohesive, Early Morning Migration was an obsession of mine for a long time, and still holds a place in my heart. It's the other album I show to people when I want to communicate the emotional potential of electronic music. It lies on the quieter side of the spectrum, I suppose… The production is flawless, and adds such a huge amount to the sound of the record as a whole.

I really wanted this album to define me at the end of high school. I would tell people about it all the time; I'd pretty much shove it down their throats in fact, and get upset if they didn't love it! The song 'Swarming', especially, is one of the best examples of the limitless possibilities of pop music: it’s a pop song at its core – Verse / Chorus / Verse / Chorus / Bridge / Chorus (I think?) – but it is SO out there at the same time. The timing and the rhythms are so strange; it’s a beautiful and delightful challenge, just like the rest of the album.

My second-most listened-to album ever, right behind Frou Frou's Details. Relaxing, and lush as all hell. The percussion, in particular, is one of the most beautiful aspects of the album, and the whole thing is produced so perfectly. I think that's what it is for me – Eingya is the most seamless work of music, both in its production and its listenability. There is nothing else that sounds anything quite like it (well, nothing else that I’ve come across at least). It's heavenly – I think I must have fallen asleep to this album every single night for the first three months that I owned it :)