Ten Uncompromising Albums I Enjoy
(Plenty of totally anodyne albums could be called “uncompromising,” I suppose, insofar as they were exactly what their creators intended them to be. Chicago 17 might well be uncompromising; Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down might be uncompromising; and I like both of those albums; but I’m using the word to refer to albums whose artists imposed a set of rigors on them that are likely to repel the sensibilities of most listeners, even fairly adventurous ones, and who refused to release themselves from those rigors for the sake of offering comfort or providing welcome—not loud albums necessarily, but often brutalizing, sometimes cold, and usually under the sway of an expressive impulse or a system of pattern-making that leaves both the performers and the listeners feeling caught in the beartrap of the music.)
Uncompromising with Regard to an Expressive Impulse
Mimikry by ANBB (abrasive sample track)
Starsailor by Tim Buckley (shamanistic sample track)
Plague Mass by Diamanda Galás (harrowing sample track)
Blemish by David Sylvian (heartbroken sample track)
Tilt by Scott Walker (haunting sample track)
Uncompromising with Regard to a System of Pattern-Making
Glass Ceiling Universe by Apprentice Destroyer (surreptitiously obtained sample track)
Dysnomia by Dawn of Midi (constrained sample track)
Dataplex by Ryoji Ikeda (minimalistic sample track)
Nothing by System Error (pristine sample track)
Some Deaths Take Forever by Bernard Szajner (death row sample track)
— June 14, 2021