Led Zeppelin – BBC Sessions (1997)

Led Zeppelin is one of the most talented bands that have ever existed. What I mean by calling them talented, is that every single member of that band was amazing with their instrument. Robert Plant's Vocals extend to amazing heights, Jimmy Page is one of the best guitar players of all times, John Paul Jones has incredible bass lines and John Bonham is one of the all time best drummers in the world. They have some amazing songs as well, but the main thing this band is known for is their incredible talent. Zeppelin used lots of different genres in their music throughout their career. This album is a compilation of studio and live recordings that were just rotated as bootlegs before the release of this album. I feel like it focuses more on the band's bluesy side than probably any other individual album.

Kalle Salonen – Barracuda Man (2016)

When I was on seventh to ninth grade, we had, in our school, a class for children with intellectual disabilities. I remember from many events in our school where kids from that class would perform. Some were dancing and some were playing music. I specifically remember this man, Kalle Salonen, who used to play piano really well already back then. Earlier this year, I found out that he had become a great groove jazz organ player. I went to see him play with some of my friends in Helsinki this summer. He had a great band and the music grooved beautifully. They even had a visiting star, Jukka Gustavson, one of the best organ players in Finland, playing with them. Kalle and him were kind of battling on solos. Barracuda Man album was there on sale and I bought it. It's a great groove jazz and funk album full of great songs.

Teenage Fanclub – Bandwagonesque (1991)

At the end of 1991, the respected music magazine, Spin, selected Bandwagonesque as the greatest album published in 1991. That's quite an accomplishment considering that in 1991, such albums as Nirvana's Nevermind, Pearl Jam's Ten and Guns n' Roses' Use Your Illusion were published. For many music nerds of the time, those albums were, however, overly produced and in some people's opinion, that was against the whole movement grunge represented. What makes this statement even more significant, is the fact that Kurt Cobain himself told everyone at the time that Teenage Fanclub, who had toured with them, was the best band in the world, pretty much based on the material on this album. I don't know if I completely agree with these statements, but it's still clear that this third album by the Scottish power pop band Teenage Fanclub had something really special. Even Liam Gallagher has called Teenage Fanclub the second best band in the world (after Oasis of course).

Midlake – Bamnan and Slivercork (2004)

I fell in love with Midlake's music after hearing their 2010 album The Courage of Others. I have always been a fool for melancholic tunes and folk music. It wasn't long before I dug up their previous album The Trials of Van Occupanther and I loved that album as well. It took me a lot longer to discover the band's debut album Bamnan and Slivercork. I found it in a London-based record shop on sale with a couple of pounds and decided to buy it having spent very minimal time listening to it before. On this album, Midlake sounds still a bit raw and they haven't found their sound yet. The sounds are quite lo-fi and the general sound of the album is perhaps closer to indie pop than to folk. There are no flutes that sound so great on the later albums and instead there are some lo-fi synth sounds and simple electronic beats etc.

Bruce Dickinson – Balls to Picasso (1994)

Some time ago, I wrote about pretty much the same songs in another post about Bruce Dickinson's Live in Studio A album. In a way, it's a bit strange to write about this album after that, because this was the original album, where Live in Studio A was a remake of the songs played live in studio. The good news is that Balls to Picasso is a lot better than Live in Studio A. I still hold on to some things I said in that post about me not listening to this kind of music anymore at all, but at least the sounds on this album are a lot better. The songs are really not that exciting on this album either, but the better production makes the album more listenable. As I said back then, Dickinson's solo material is not as melodic and not as ambitious as Iron Maiden's albums, and today I would never even consider buying an album like this.

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan – Ballad of the Broken Seas (2006)

While in the university, I used to have evenings here and there with a couple of my friends where we would play each other some of our favourite records that the others might not have heard about before. Someone brought this album to one of those evenings and I remember being really interested after hearing that Isobel Campbell was in Belle & Sebastian, which I adored at the time. Back then I wasn't yet familiar with the name Mark Lanegan, but later on he has come quite important musical figure to me through his solo career, through Screaming Trees and through Queens of the Stone Age. This collaboration between two amazing singer-songwriters is also really interesting. Their music is mostly Americana folk with some very dark sounds. I like how their voices are completely different, but work together well.

Fredator – Bad Jazz (2010)

For at least as long as I've been living here in London, I've really appreciated the Finnish jazz scene. There are numerous amazing jazz bands in Helsinki and other cities as well. In my youth I played bass in a jazz school and through that school worked as a volunteer at a jazz festival in Espoo. I got to be taught by some of the best jazz musicians in the country. Despite all of this, I didn't necessarily appreciate the scene as much back then. It may be because I've grown a bit and like to explore new music a bit more nowadays, but today I'm really excited that there's such a vibrant jazz scene where I come from. Nowadays, whenever I visit Helsinki, I usually buy one or two Finnish jazz records. Fredator is quite a recent band that I found while trying to Google what was going on in Finland's jazz scene.

Kevin – Bad Dream Stone Mystery (2006)

By mid-00's, Helsinki's music scene was full of indie rock bands that got their influences mostly from US-based indie rock bands. A vast majority of these bands chose to sing in English, because it kind of felt like the official language of this genre, but also that choice allowed them to dream big of an international career. I think it would be safe to say that none of these bands made it big internationally, but I can't really blame the bands, because there's some quite amazing music made around that time. Kevin was one of these bands that sounded ambitious and international. Their first album had had a big hit in the indie circles and I think many Helsinki rockers were looking forward to their second album, me included. Unfortunately, I feel like Bad Dream Stone Mystery is not quite as good as their debut was, but it's still a nice album.

AC/DC – Back in Black (1980)

I can't remember who exactly said it, but there is a saying that there are two kinds of bands in the world, bands like Led Zeppelin, who constantly renew themselves exploring new sounds, sometimes succeeding big time and sometimes failing, and then there are bands like AC/DC who keep doing the same thing for years and years, but doing exactly that really well. Even if this is the case, I think it's easy to pinpoint AC/DC's golden era. In my opinion, at least, it's in albums Highway to Hell and Back in Black. What makes this interesting, is that these albums have two different lead singers. Back in Black is the first album with Brian Johnson, who replaced Bon Scott who had died earlier in the year. Usually the death of the lead singer would be such a blow to the band that they would have to quit or change significantly. But not AC/DC.

Aavikko – Back from the Futer (2005)

For such a tiny country, Finland has a really rich music scene. Aavikko is a good example of a band that had courage to make music that wasn't very fashionable at the time, but that got some following from their uniqueness. Aavikko plays synth pop that seems to take most of their influences from late 70's Kraftwerk. The synth sounds are very retro and there are similarities to Nintendo video game sounds. There aren't that many lyrics in the songs, apart from occasional spoken word sequences. In a way, this band sounds like a simplified and early version of Public Service Broadcasting. Aavikko is from a tiny town called Siilinjärvi. They must've had all the time in the world to experiment with sounds and it really shows in the results. I think Back from the Futer is the band's best album. I bought it a long time ago on a CD in nice glossy covered cardboard case.

Mumford & Sons – Babel (2012)

I was a bit late for the Mumford & Sons party. Sigh No More had already made this band a phenomenon, but I only really discovered the band fully after Babel was released. More specifically, the song I Will Wait that was playing everywhere caught my ears and I was very impressed. This happened right in the middle of my folk phase, where I would listen to both more traditional old folk and the new wave of, especially American folk. Mumford & Sons is not really a purist folk band, since the songs are produced with way too modern sounds and there's no authentic acoustic sound in most of the songs. Nevertheless, I really liked the catchy pop melodies and the use of super fast banjo. I ended up buying both this and the first album Sigh No More around the same time from sale when the biggest fuss was over.

Sigur Rós – Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do (2004)

This EP is not necessarily known to even that many people who consider themselves Sigur Rós fans, let alone other people. I remember when a friend of mine bought this EP when it was brand new and we listened to it quite a lot at the time. Back then I felt like this was a bit too obscure and the price was quite high for a CD that only had three songs on it. Later on I kind of regretted my decision not to buy it, because I started to like the amazing ambient sounds of the EP, but couldn't find it anywhere. This EP has been out of print for a long time. Fortunately, a couple of years ago, I found it second hand in a record store in London, so now I'm a happy owner of this great EP. This EP is mainly instrumental and there are only a couple of small moments when you can hear human voices, but even they are quite obscure.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – B.R.M.C. (2001)

My attitude towards this album has changed quite a few times over the time I've owned it. I first heard my friend play it and it sounded excellent, so I also bought it. Actually, before buying it I copied on a mini disc. Fairly soon after I had purchased this album, however, I felt like I didn't really enjoy the songs that much and the songs sounded too un-melodic. Then almost 15 years later I happened to listen to them again and I felt like I was blown away how good they sounded. Clearly my taste in music had changed, but also this kind of dark neo-psychedelia had come back in fashion. In early 00's, this band was quite unique in its genre. No-one else seemed to make this kind of music. Now there are lots of cool bands that use these kinds of Krautrock-influenced psychedelic sounds and I have been very excited about those bands in the recent years.

Kent – B-Sidor 95-00 (2000)

Kent is a Swedish rock band that was hugely popular in the Nordic countries, but almost completely unknown outside of those countries. This is probably because the band sings in Swedish. They tried at some point making English versions of their albums, but the result was kind of disappointing to band's existing fans and thus that experiment didn't really lead anywhere. Anyhow, Kent is one of the most successful Swedish bands of all times and I think it's one of the best as well. Kent's first albums were still a bit unpolished and the last albums tripped themselves in too much focus on electronic instruments at the expense of good songwriting. But the albums in the middle of their career were excellent. This B-side collection includes non-album songs from the first five years in the band's recording history.

Villagers – {Awayland} (2013)

This is one of those albums that I ended up buying purely because the band had one amazing song. This song, Nothing Arrived, sounded like the early albums by Arcade Fire, but somehow it was even more melodic and lighter, which I really liked. This song appeared over and over again in Spotify's curated playlists and I had to investigate what this band was all about. Unfortunately {Awayland} wasn't as good as I might've thought purely based on that one song, but it still has its other moments as well, if nothing as exciting as this song. This Irish band mixes acoustic folk with 00's indie rock sounds and come out with melodic and well-produced music. This album sounds a lot like many other bands I've found in the last few years. It has clear echoes of 00's indie rock that I so cherished back in the day, but it has something more modern in its sounds as well.

Avi Buffalo – Avi Buffalo (2010)

I just wrote about Avi Buffalo's second album here in this blog a couple of weeks ago. This predecessor is not quite as impressive of an album, but it's still a great one, and definitely for a debut album. This album has a bit more of a slacker sound than At Best Cuckold. It reminds me of Mac de Marco in places, although I think Avi Buffalo is a better songwriter than Mac de Marco. There are some great melodies in these songs. He's also an amazing musician and the intertwining guitar lines are really phenomenal already on this album. I was introduced to Avi Buffalo when At Best Cuckold was released and it was introduced as one of the albums of the month at Rough Trade. Since then I've been listening to Avi Buffalo a lot and I also wanted to find out about his previous album, so I bought it second hand at Flash Back in Shoreditch.

Agnes Obel – Aventine (2013)

When I was working on my music geography blog a few years ago, I wasn't expecting that much from the music of Denmark. Most of the Danish bands I knew were not really that interesting and Danish music just brought to mind the awful 90's techno bands. When I started doing my research, however, I found out that there were quite a few great Danish bands that I hadn't known about before. Agnes Obel was one of the most interesting artists I found in this way. Her music is very beautiful and somehow haunting. The piano takes the lead in most of the songs with the vocals, sometimes with accompanying strings. For someone like me, who really enjoys beautiful melodies and clean vocals, this album sounded magical. I bought the album on a beautiful digipak CD. I've listened to it quite a lot since then.

Fredi – Avaa sydämesi mulle (1974)

The cover art on this album is quite something. That moustache, that suit and the way he's holding the microphone are all phenomenal. Fredi is a Finnish singer, who has recorded lots of foreign songs translated into Finnish. He has also represented Finland in the Eurovision song contest with a song called Pump-pump, where the lyrics, loosely translated, go 'bum against bum, bump bump'. Fredi is a really good singer, but the music is mainly just translations of well-known songs and the production is often quite cheesy. Anyway, I kind of like the sound of the album. The musicians are talented and Fredi's voice really gets to show its best sides. I ended up owning this album, because my mother owned it and I got it from her when my parents didn't buy a new record player to replace their old turntable that broke.