OK this is in response to kfan’s made-up meme and at first I was all: Nobody ever introduced me to any new music because I am always the one introducing others to the awsum music that I enjoy. But then I remembered how in 1998 or so I was getting sort of bored with loud/rawk/guitar-type music? Which was pretty much all I listened to from high school on..? And how up till that point I had total disdain for “techno” or really anything that wasn’t by the Pixies? So this was sort of a capital-C Crisis?
Anyway I was working at WebTV (!!) and became friends with Matt & Kieca who were the best kind of friends to have, and who introduced me to Mr. Show and honey-based cocktails and the concept of Having Cats, and who even let me have my birthday party at their house because my Mountain View apartment was so ridiculously small.
And one time Kieca loaned me The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Underworld and I listened to it at work one day and was all: OK, this isn’t quite as GHEY as I would assume any non-guitar/rawk music would be. And when I was buying some albums online I decided to roll the dice and get The Orb’s Orbvs Terrarvm along with Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (because I SORT OF liked NMH’s previous album, even though it sounded all lo-fi and crappo).
So that was a pretty good purchase because today I’d put both of those albums in my Personal Top 10. Orbvs doesn’t get as many kudos as other Orb albums but for me it’ll always be my favorite because it opened a whole new world (shining, shimmering, splendid!) of the kind of music that is still my primary interest today. What drew me to it was how organic it sounded, what with all the birdsong and water noises — the exact opposite of what I thought electronic music was all about.
Unfortunately, all the tracks on that album are over 10 MB, so I can’t post them here. So instead I posted the one-minute “radio version” of “A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld” (original version is 19 minutes) to give you a taste.
Anyway, thanks to Matt and Kieca, who also appeared in my shitty movie Brainbox (as did their home), who were interviewed on the local news when their house was flooded and we had to go dig all their rare vinyl 12-inches out of the mud, and who moved back home to DC after I moved to the east coast, and thanks to Matt’s band LU which is also excellent.
You always hear about albums that change people’s lives, and I’m always like: Really? The Wall changed your entire life? Like, how you view the world and what your goals are? But I have to say Matt & Kieca did just that. So thanks.