Blitzen Trapper – Black River Killer EP (2009)

I remember when I first heard the album Furr by the American West Coast band Blitzen Trapper. I was extremely impressed by their sound. Later on I discovered that Furr was actually the hight of their career. One of my favourite tracks on Furr was Black River Killer, a dark folk song about a murder. This song was very similar to some of Bob Dylan's storytelling songs. Then I saw this EP in a record shop in Helsinki and I noticed that there were six songs that weren't on Furr in addition to the title track, which made me buy it immediately. I don't think other songs on this album are necessarily Furr quality, but at least it's like a bonus track compilation of leftover songs from Furr. The album cover is very beautiful with the dark heavy-metal like text. The music itself doesn't really have anything to do with heavy metal though.

Junip – Black Refuge EP (2005)

Junip is a Swedish band led by the Swedish-Argentinian folk musician José Gonzales. His solo albums are hauntingly beautiful and hypnotic, filled with quiet folk songs played on a nylon string guitar. Junip has similar songwriting, but there are more instruments and the sounds are a bit bigger. I don't know if I can technically say that I own this album, because it's just a bonus CD on Junip's album Fields. Nevertheless, it's an individual CD with these songs that were released on this EP five years earlier in 2005, so I'm counting it separately on this list. The EP has just five songs and it's only 19 minutes long. This is the second EP from Junip and it does give quite a different view of the band than the more recent albums, which sound much more professional by their sounds. I kind of like the slightly lo-fi sounds on this EP though.

Placebo – Black Market Music (2000)

Back in the start of the millennium I used to love Placebo. Their dark and bleak music was perfectly melancholic for a young adult in Finland. The singer Brian Molko's voice has lots of nasal and it's not necessarily that pleasant for a more conservative ear. I used to love it, because it was so different from anyone else and it really worked brilliantly in the context of this band's music. Black Market Music, as an album, was my least favourite Placebo album for a long time. The first two albums were superior in songwriting and sounds, and even the album that came after, Sleeping With Ghosts, was more to my liking. Any albums since then, though, have been a move to a worse direction and today, Black Market Music is still a part of Placebo's golden era. I very rarely listen to Placebo anymore, but I still have lots of respect for their music.

Santana – Black Magic Woman (Best of Santana) (1986)

This is one of the first albums my family owned. Back in the 80's my father bought a portable CD player that we could connect to our stereo and even the car stereo. Back then, CDs were called laser discs. This is a German compilation album of Santana's greatest hits. The album cover is incredibly 80's. I had to spend some time actually finding the track list for this album, because the actual CD is in Finland. Fortunately, I was able to compile a playlist on Spotify for all of these songs. I grew up with Santana, because my father listened to it quite a lot, but when I grew up and started making more of my own choices in music, I have never really been much of a fan of Santana. It is basically a prime example of dad-rock and definitely very uncool. Even so, I think Santana is legendary enough that owning one album by them is justified. Although, I wish this was Abraxas on vinyl instead.

Muse – Black Holes and Revelations (2006)

Like I said in the previous post about a Muse album, I used to be really impressed by Muse's music back in the day, but nowadays I don't really listen to it at all anymore. Where I actually really liked Absolution back in the day, I remember that when Black Holes and Revelations first came out, I already kind of thought it wasn't that good anymore. I did, however, like a couple of individual songs from the album and ended up buying it on a CD because I happened to find it cheap somewhere. Thinking back to that time, I think I mainly bought it because of the song Knights of Cydonia. Muse has probably always been a very big sounding band aiming to play big stadiums, but on this album, I feel like they lost the last bits of being an alternative rock band and they just became a stadium rock band with huge sounds.

Various Artists – Black Fist Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1977)

I have no recollection how this album has found its way into my record collection. The best guess is that it was among the quite a few albums I got from my grandparents' place. Probably previously owned by one of my uncles. The other possibility is that I got it from some of my friends as a birthday present or something. The problem with this album is that I only have it on vinyl and the vinyl is in storage in Finland. This album is not available in its entirety online either, so I have to base this post on the couple of songs that I can find online. I'm quite surprised if I have indeed found this album at my grandparents' house. The film with the same name is about a black street fighter who goes to work for a white gangster and a corrupt cop. Seems like a similar kind of cult film as Shaft. the soundtrack is filled with excellent funk and soul songs.

Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca (2009)

I'll start off this post by saying that I'm not really sure what I think about the Dirty Projectors. The sounds are nicely unique and there are many elements in this music that I really like. Then again, the songwriting is quite noisy and not always even very pleasant to listen to. I like quite simple melodies in pop music, or at least melodies that are recognisable. Dirty Projectors seems to just improvise as they go along and it's usually not even according to any chord progression. There are just random noises here and there forming the songs. Animal Collective has used similar approaches in their music and, similarly to Dirty Projectors, I'm not too sure what I'm thinking about them. Maybe I'm just too conventional when it come to music. I mean, I only just started enjoying my first jazz fusion albums. Anyway, even if I think there's something genius about this album, I'm not sure if I like it that much.

Oxford Collapse – Bits (2008)

In the hindsight, 00's was a golden decade of guitar-driven indie rock. There were so many of these bands around that many, even really good, bands got lost in the mix. Oxford Collapse may not be even among the best such bands, but at least they have something else to offer besides clean garage rock with disco drumming. In addition to indie rock tradition, Oxford Collapse also draws influences from punk rock. There's also a certain element of noise and lo-fi in the sounds. The vocals are off-key and the main deal seems to be the attitude, rather than interesting songwriting. In that sense, I feel like the band is sort of similar to Modest Mouse or Titus Andronicus. I think I first heard about this band by borrowing the CD from a library. It was released by SubPop and at the time that was almost a guarantee of good music, so I took my chances and it paid off.

Miles Davis – Bitches Brew (1970)

Like I said in my previous Miles Davis post a couple of days ago, I listened to jazz quite a lot 15 years ago when I was taking bass lessons at Ebeli in Finland. Back then, however, I wasn't quite hardcore with jazz enough to get into jazz fusion. It was way too strange to me. I normally enjoy quite simple and clear melodies. More recently, I feel like my taste in music has evolved to be much more inclusive and I've started enjoying music I wasn't too keen on before. This broadening of the mind has resulted in me actually starting to quite enjoy some jazz fusion albums. Bitches Brew can be called one of the first such albums. By the end of the 60's, Miles Davis found himself in a situation where he wasn't popular with youngsters anymore. He decided to do something about it and invented a whole new musical genre while he was at it.