The Buggles – The Age of Plastic (1980)
Forever known as the band that launched MTV with ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’, I started listening to their debut album a few weeks ago. It’s a fascinating piece of music history that extends far beyond the irresistible one hit that defined a music generation. Released in 1980, the recording of The Age of Plastic was several years ahead of the synth-pop that would populate the infancy of MTV. One half of The Buggles, Trevor Horn, found success as a producer for many of the most memorable MTV icons of that age such as Frankie Goes to Hollywood and ABC, but The Buggles were ahead of the curve. There’s a progressive mindset throughout the album and songs like ‘Kid Dynamo’ border on rock opera, which nudges The Buggles closer to Styx than Tubeway Army.

‘Living In the Plastic Age’ sets the tone for the entire album with its fear of where technology may take society. Nobody could have predicted the influence of MTV on music and ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ actually laments the demise of radio shows in the wake of moving pictures, but the themes proved prescient. The flawless production values for the time period are almost lost in the hooks and pulsating beats. It’s a fun, slightly silly slice of science fiction set to progressive synth-pop. The Age of Plastic is a piece of pop history that deserves a larger place in the cultural psyche. – Jason Lent

Tor Lundvall – Under The Shadows Of Trees (2003)
The everyday plains we’re slipping and sidling through seem a bit eldritch in the wee hours. Buried under their anterior motions, swimming in swarthy, technicolor streams that are oddly lukewarm and completely devoid of bent, these still waters are bubbling with a numbing kinetic energy. The cavernous ambience, the stoic pop musings, the bowery twigs rattling in the hum of unseen undercurrents. All things elemental now rule the roost: ‘June Rain’, ‘Sinking Sun’, ‘Orange Moon’, ‘Leaf Sway’. All things bear distinct colors, but due to everlasting cycle, they all wash together. Everything’s a coda. Everything is ending, forever. On this cruelly thin filament dividing fatigue from forty winks, everything wears on and on and on. We aren’t moving a muscle, but we’re sinking. – Vinh Cao

McCoy Tyner – Echoes of a Friend (1972)
Beauty surrounds us, but it takes a lot for us to notice it. The sun rises and the sun sets daily, but we never take the time to observe this majestic occurrence. Once it has happened a few thousand times in our lifetime, it begins to be taken for granted. It has to confront us for us to notice it and even then, it is generally in passing. “Oh look at that lovely sky”, we say to a friend while walking before moving on to the next topic in conversation. Now, beauty has to come from a generally unexpected place for us to really take attention and be enraptured by it. Listening to McCoy Tyner’s Echoes of a Friend is one of those confrontational moments. From the beginning of the album, as it begins with a rendition of John Coltrane’s ‘Naima’, Tyner’s distinct style appears as the listener is greeted with a seemingly endless flurry of notes so numerous and so lovely that the one cannot help but feel overwhelmed. This album was recorded live in Japan with no accompaniment as a tribute to Coltrane. Tyner’s love and reverence for Coltrane is evident throughout as the three renditions of Coltrane songs are all extremely soulful and moving. Also, Tyner’s two original songs that close the album are no disappointment if not quite as immediately satisfying.

Tyner’s playing truly is superb and one cannot help but wonder how one man could play so many notes at once. Whether you are a fan of Tyner’s other work, listen to this as soon as possible and if that’s not possible, try to take in a sunset sometime soon or maybe even both. One can never have enough beautiful things in their life. – Micah Wimmer

Morton Feldman – Rothko Chapel; Why Patterns? (1991)
Staring at the shroud will only get us so far. Stepping into it is the key to dissipating these dogged blinders and unlocking the veritable surfeit of sensations we’ve long pined for but lacked the spine to pursue. Before yet another mite is tacked onto our swelling string of squandered opportunity, before yet another propitious pearl dies of old age while we fumble about in a standstill marred by silly hesitation, before we turn our backs on perfect paths, sprites descend from the twilit firmament to throw us the most stirring of bones. A voice. Its cautious, ghostly coos cut through the crepuscule like a knife sliding through softened butter, its quivers branding every last inch of the night in fleeting luminosity. One by one, bedfellows crawl out of the woodwork, out of the wooden. Timpani roll, violas billow, celestas twinkle in the dusk for radiant milliseconds and though the faces are familiar, the dance performed is as abstruse as it is arresting. It continually slinks away as the curtain drops, retreating into the gloam, coaxing us into unmapped territory, urging us to follow along, in the dark, on pure instinct.

They’ll only meet us halfway, golden wisps dangling in the eventide, withering as they beg to be salvaged at just the right moment. At the wrong tick — and they are plentiful — a few sparks are belched to then evanesce in a trice. But when their luster and our bluster dovetail, they soar to unfathomable heights, fated fireworks ballooning and bursting in the zenith for us and us alone. We’re forsaking the terminally insipid for our terra incognita. We’re charting new courses, we’re celebrating chance. We’re taking one. These are the foggy gorges we were meant to mine. – Vinh Cao