For me, one of the first albums I really heard differently through headphones was Are You Experienced. Until that point, I had no idea that the stereophonic sound could be used so dramatically.
Blockhead's Music by Cavelight is one of the best chill-out/trip hop albums I have heard. All the songs have a very unique sound. This happens rarely with me when it comes to music, but I can listen to this album any number of times without getting bored.
I love putting on my noise cancelling headphones and shutting out the world once in a while. When I do, I listen to: De loused in the Comatorium Getting Paid A mix of Daft Punk songs The Moon and Antarctica Rubber Factory
That Zechs Marquise track is great; I'm eager to check out the rest of that album as well. I love The Black Keys, though for some reason I never listen to them with my headphones on, always at full blast in the car or on my home system. I'll give them a listen with headphones on tonight for sure.
The entire album is pretty awesome, I think you'll enjoy it. It's hard to put into words what kind of music they perform, but I still like the "Experimental Outer-space Jam" tag that I've heard used.
Not all of these are panpot fiestas -- they just work better in an intimate, straight-to-the-head way: · R.E.M. - Chronic Town (especially the first, second and last tracks)
· American Music Club - Mercury
· Rare Air - Hard to Beat
· Soul Coughing - El Oso (n.b.: never play "Maybe I'll Come Down" when you can't)
· Concussion Ensemble - Stampede
· The The - Mind Bomb (only side 1)
· Jeff Buckley - Grace (probably one of the best-produced chanteur albums ever, leads off with two Gary Lucas tracks, best CD to test headphones using the openings of "Lover You Should've Come Over" and the title track) A couple of the albums above really only need headphones for the first track or the first few. This is especially true for:
· Deltron 3030 (effing amazing album but the heavy stuff gives way to more relaxed tracks and the headphones can come off)
I had the audacity once to attempt to perform Lover You Should of Come Over solo at an open mic. -Ouch. I really enjoy that album though, it's been years since I've listened to it because I used to listen to it too much. If you're a fan, you might consider checking out this old post: http://hubski.com/pub?id=27073 wherein the lyrics for the song Hallelujah are discussed, including the versus Buckley omits. It's a cool discussion imo.
You are brave to have tried. It seems so simple when you rehearse, and then you realize you have to convey demure observation and full cri de coeur within two minutes, then do it again. If you fail to turn it back down again and oversell the opening lines of each section, people just tune out. Oh, and the range. Yeah, he had a magical range. His father was a good song writer and performer, but Jeff was leagues better. I also love the jokes on the Live at sin-é disc.
They say there is a fine line between brave and stupid. No such line here, this was just stupid. I have no where near the range to pull that song off. Live at sin-é is fantastic. I'm going to post something from it now.
Haven't listened to El Oso through headphones as I only have an mp3 copy, but I have an Irresistible Bliss CD that always sounded great to me through headphones. I feel like a lot of the intimacy of certain Soul Coughing tracks, combined with the quality of the vocals loses a little something when played through speakers, or at least my speakers.
Lately I've really been harking on Deathconsciousness by Have a Nice Life. It's probably the most emotionally powerful album I've ever heard. And it sounds so distinct. Sort of like shoegaze, but not really. Sort of like drone metal but not really. The drums being just slightly off beat at just the right moments, the subtle use of electronics, the brilliant structure. It's really a brilliant work of art.
Oh man, Bloodhail is such a fantastic song. Have you heard the new stuff by Giles Corey? They recently added a live set and an EP to their bandcamp.
It's been on my list for a while. I'll get around to it soon. I'll probably skip a few gigs I've got waiting and listen to it the next night that has the right sort of vibe. I can only listen to Giles Corey at night when I'm feeling tired but not sleepy and a little crazy. arrowheads arrowheads arrowheads
Deathconsciousness is their only full length album out. There's another that's allegedly in production, but I'm not believing it till I see it. Dan Barrett also has some good stuff released as Giles Corey, but nothing quite as good as Deathconsciousness, if you ask me at least.
Try out CAN, one of the founding Krautrock bands. They're pretty strange, but if they click with you they bang. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAv0-TAE1UE "Mushroom Head" I couldn't find "Future Days" on youtube, but that's another good one for an initial impression. Their story is one of my favorites, too. Basically it was post WWII Germany, and a group of musicians decided they had a blank slate of culture to work with, so they took a bunch of drugs and played what came out. They needed a frontman, and one day they found a skinny Asian dude tripping out on his back in the street. They all agreed that they had found their singer.
No problem, glad to hear you like them. Check out their album Tago Mago. Here's a documentary about their era of music.
Devin Townsend's double-album Deconstruction / Ghost. The first part (Deconstruction) is heavy metal, while the second (Ghost) is almost New Age with moments that brush against Devin's Metal style. It's like listening to an orchestrated bloody revolution, followed by the best make-up sex your ears have ever had.
Any album by Gorillaz, the music is so versatile and varied, you can have it as background for almost any situation.
I rarely listen to music at all, but NIN with Ghosts series does the trick for me.
All of them. Yes, there is a certain presence from blasting something on speakers that headphones can't quite deliver, but the way I like to listen to music is where music is my sole focus with no distractions. It's hard to resist headphones' ability to deliver perfectly consistent sound no matter where or how you move if you want to listen to music like this.
I just posted a song from one of them, Artificial Intelligence II. Vol I, is amazing too. The sound is very 3-dimensional.
Through headphones? That's a fairly tough question actually. I've found that anything by M83 sounds great through headphones, you can't deny how good Pink Floyd sounds through them either. Throw on a pair of headphones for anything by Yo La Tengo though, and you'll be in bliss. Especially anything such as Night Falls on Hoboken, or their more melodic music. That's where I lose myself.
Yo La Tengo is amaaaazing. Ira isn't aware of the world on the stage. I'm going to see them in a few months, and I can't help but tell everyone I know how I excited I am. It's really incredible how much depth they play such a wide variety of music with- they've opened me up to so many different genres. Their noise stuff is especially good for headphones, for Ira's noises. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYF4wbyrNyY live, but still wouldn't listen to this without running to find my headphones.
They've done so much, their music career has been prolific to say the least. Are you seeing them when they open for Belle & Sebastian? If so, I'm planning on going to one of those dates too!