This is my favourite album of all time, and it's a sound I've explored and analyzed countless numbers of times for several years. CV were one of the greatest electronic music pioneers of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and along with Human League they shaped what had come to be defined as 'the sound of Sheffield', influencing artists around the globe. Though this record is some of their later fare, it's an absolute pinnacle. Just four tracks, each one roughly 8:00 minutes long, hard sound, sketchy (in the right way), lo-fi, lots of sounds coming into the mix from elsewhere and reverberating out, dark, desperate, funky, evolving. Absolutely perfect.

... in fact, let's just get Cabaret Voltaire squared away right now. According to about two people I know personally (well, the only two people I know who I have been known to talk about Cabaret Voltaire with), this is the best thing the Cabs ever came out with. Warranted view, in my opinion. First, there's the sound and production quality. It is impeccable here. Worth a mention, this is one of CV's most DETAILED albums... there is a lot of rigourous sample-work, flourishes of sound and noise, sound-manipulation, and the music generally is top notch in terms of it's feel... it's also, in my opinion, one of the darkest, seediest records they ever put out, so the case for owning this album is therefore very strong. However...

... this is, I believe, a superior album. Granted, the sound quality and loudness of this record is no comparison to 'The Covenant...', but the track selection here is wonderful, many of my favourite Cabs classics are culled from this album. While not as dark and personal as 'The Covenant...', the material here is still pretty bleak in places and much of it is more politically charged. So, in effect, this suffers from much the same stigma as A Certain Ratio's 'To Each...', having been not as well produced as their later work although featuring many of their greatest cuts. I think there is a better case to be made for the owning of this album than there is for 'The Covenant...' -- though, preferably, you'll just own them both!

So let's talk about this album, being as it is ANOTHER one of CV's assumed best albums ever. I have no argument against such a premise, since this is probably their greatest historical legacy within the context of industrial music, even electronic music as a whole. The sound is top-notch, as well. All I can really site as my preference for some of their later work is pure aesthetics, but even that at times fails me... as I put this on, it's hard not to feel as though it is the single greatest album of all time. It may very well be.

... just thinking of Mix-Up leads me fondly to their sophomore album, 'The Voice of America'... this record is kind of abysmal to most, being popularly derided as their worst (even in the face of the late 1980s and early 1990s house material they released!), but it has always maintained a special place in my heart. This was, at a time, one of my only two Cabaret Voltaire albums, the other being 'Code'. I would often listen to the mp3s on walks to places in my youth, grew very fond of several of the tracks. This is not a danceable record, unless you're some kind of freaky weirdo like I am. No, this is more the kind of album that makes for a perfect accompaniment to any surreal chapter of your life and is to be felt in a more sublimated way for complete understanding of how perfect it is. That it depends on such subjective evaluation is not even a strike against it... keep it close to you and wait for the perfect time to put it on, when you feel an occult mood to be catching. This is ritual music, of a high caliber, particularly if you're doing cut-up projects.

This is, in my opinion, somehow both one of the Cabs WORST albums and yet one of their best. To qualify that statement, the material featured here is some of their best and the production value is very high... but this is also home to one of the Cabs most proliferated tracks, 'Sensoria'. It's not an altogether horrible track, but sustaining so much undeserved replay has done some work toward making it nearly unlistenable. Every once in awhile I can throw it on, but it gets a lot of undue attention. Still, this is another perfect record in my opinion, and to the uninitiated, this is one of the better starting places for those hoping to get into CV.

This is the last Cabs album I'll mention. Chances are, if you're in the market for Cabaret Voltaire and you're not already heavily invested in accumulating any of their records, this is going to be your introduction to their sound. This is because it is still the easiest record of theirs to acquire... or at least as far as the compact disc copies go... though that's not to say for the average person that it will be EASY to acquire. This was my introduction to the Cabs, though, and while I personally love this record it is far away from being their finest album and is not a passable introduction to their sound. It is rather kind of lackluster in production compared to their earlier work. One of it's major problems is how glossed up and weak it sounds to most people. That's not to say that there isn't a lot going on in the mix or, more accurately, that there isn't a lot TRYING to happen in the mix, but the whole thing has this discernable late-1980s sheen to it that puts a muzzle on whatever bite the album could have had. This is why I feel a lot of people mistakenly believe the material here isn't as cutting or acid-tinged as with their previous work. The lyrics are still pretty sharp, especially on tracks like 'Thank You America' and 'Here To Go', hearkening back to 'The Crackdown' in their shadowy, paranoia-fueled politicization... and the seediness of tracks like 'Sex, Money, Freaks' and 'Code' are on par with anything from 'The Covenant...'. It's just unfortunate that the production gloss rendered these facets to their sound on this album inept, and it is duly unfortunate that this is still the most widely available Cabs record on the market. Still, all this aside, and again because this was the first Cabs album I was able to expose myself to, I will always love 'Code' and continue to this day to put it on... even though my copy is almost completely fucked!

It's hard not to want to turn this record up.. and up, and up, and up! So funky, so cold. Another seminal Sheffield act, released by Factory and a band whose formation was inspired rightfully by the masterful Cabaret Voltaire, but is not altogether a clone of that sound but a different (and still very Sheffieldian) beast. What separates this from 'To Each...' is the quality of production, for sure. And those dual basslines! A perfect record.

What could have been A Certain Ratio's masterpiece, KILLED... by poor production values. Sad. Still, damned as it were, a must-own record. The feel of the record is still very in keeping with what A Certain Ratio did best: purvey a sound so bleak and cold, but with power to make you move. It's really only that last part that feels lacking on this record, if you were to compare it to the production of 'Sextet'. Oh, what could have been...

What's this? Disjointed breakbeats? Some bloke shouting? Soft mixing with sudden harsh noises? Fucking. Perfect... Album... Just listen to Hypnotized if you don't believe me. I would even go so far as to say... don't get this on vinyl. Get it on cassette! Then buy a shitty old boombox. Industrial b-boy!

So, yeah... Mark Stewart... here's another reason this guy's a genius! Some bizarre amalgamation of funk, jazz, post-punk... 100% FEROCIOUS! This album is for when you don't care you're going to look like a fool, you just want to explode! Somehow... this record just encapsulates that feeling, the music is pure chaos without losing it's form.

An acquired taste... once developed, you'll crave it time after time. When that time comes, you'll ask yourself, "Why is it I don't put this record on more often?" I just love how this feels more than anything, and how fractured it sometimes comes across in it's maniacism. Sample here, sample there, doesn't matter what it is. Doesn't matter if the whole thing fits. But... it works, and the album inspires joy in me. Can't say it's perfect, but it isn't meant to be. Perfect, perhaps, by virtue of it's imperfections!

One of my favourite Factory records... short and sweet, and strangely very similar to much of Psychic TV's later work, in that it is very Thelemic and occult, and also very emotionally charged in places. Great for when you would wish to reflect upon life and it's meaning, and get out of the house for a bit afterward.

Not a "perfect" album, but on the strength of at least one of it's tracks, deserves special mention. That track is 'I Love You (Restrained In A Moment)', next to Throbbing Gristle's 'United' it is my favourite simple "love" song ever written. The rest of the album has it's lows and it's highs -- none of the latter can quite reach the heights of the aforementioned track, but the album is not bad and definitely stands worthy of a spin in it's entirety.

Worth a special mention here, as this is probably my favourite PTV album. It's an almost FORCIBLY naive record, nearly excessive in it's poor production and execution... but determined, nonetheless, to shine through, as silver would if covered in shit. A lot of the tracks are just simple and beautiful, so it's worth it if you can find and procure a copy.

Another compact disc-only release, but one well worth owning. It is a precursor to another album that I consider Genesis P-Orridge's crowning achievement, but I'll get to that shortly. This is one big, long spoken word session. There are fleeting bits of music, by Alex Fergusson mostly, done in a sort of way that moves with the subject matter of the speech and continues to absorb you while you verge on the edge of consciousness. Was at one time my favourite PTV album, but eventually was outshone by it's spiritual successor...

... this. A perfect masterpiece. I view it as the culmination of Genesis P-Orridge's art, his magnum opus. Not only are his spoken sections spot on, but the music works so well in synergy with the lyrical content that it is hard to help feeling completely and utterly under a spell while listening to it. The album is broken into sections, the first of which are many 'Discourses', followed by material that feels like a spiritual vortex of meaning, a semblance of the split between mind and body is achieved by the listener, provided he/she has not allowed the medium (compact disc only, I'm sad to report) to distract him or her, skipping around through tracks and such. No, this is meant to be listened in full playthrough. I can't recommend this album enough, but recognize it is most certainly not for everyone... only those attuned to the magick of every day life, to a persistent form of spiritual negation and nihilism, those who feel a cosmic intelligence radiating into them from the starry skies. Otherwise, you're just not going to get it.

Throbbing Gristle... where to begin? Where to end? There's a temptation to throw on the list everything they've ever done, but much of it is unlistenable. What makes TG great is often not the music itself but the accompanying history of it, the art and writings of GP-O and company. So, I'll stick with the necessary artifacts in descending order of their importance to me, personally. There has been a wide range of discussion when it comes to one's choice of favourite album by Throbbing Gristle. Most have pegged '20 Jazz Funk Greats' as their most "accessible" record, or the "easiest" to listen to. I guess that's fair. After much deliberation, I still cannot discount the importance this record has had on me, the immense influence in terms of the sound and content. So many of the tracks are just golden, and it laid the foundation for the sound of industrial music as most people to this day recognize it. While it is two of their other records that seem to be regarded as their best, I always stick by this one, if not for the humour of it being quite a cheery record!

Two things about this absolute masterpiece that are reason enough to buy it: 1) 'Slug Bait.' Yes, it's lo-fidelity, old and a bit improvisational sounding, but regardless, it may be the single most terrifying piece of audio ever recorded. Even holds up quite nicely next to some of Whitehouse's intentional audio sadism or most anything Nurse With Wound has put out. 2) 'After Cease To Exist,' soundtrack to a Derek Jarman short film and a beautiful display of electronic sound manipulation and sequence work. On second thought, this might be my favourite Throbbing Gristle album after all...

This is definitely my favourite TG single, it always puts me in the best of moods. I think that is because it is such a sardonic, tactful rejection of authoritarianism by means of complete, serious resolve to subject us all to the authoritarian principle. Pummeling, too, for a record as old as it is!

A close second to Discipline, this single is amazing in a totally different way. 'United' is a lovely, simple, Crowleyan and universalized "love" song that is very endearing while remaining also very detached feeling. The b-side... is not my favourite TG track, but rounds out the record in a sort of dualistic / schizophrenic way.

A magickal piece of work. Live studio album recorded in front of a small audience of friends, a lot of the material is sparse and ethereal. As if in contrast, 'The Old Man Smiled' is a nail-bitingly harsh extended version of the Burroughsian 'Six Six Sixties' track from '20 Jazz Funk Greats' which totally surpasses the original in scope and breadth. The entire album was made ritualistically, and it retains that feel upon repeated listen. One of their best albums, and highly influential, though it doesn't seem to get as much praise as their other albums. Listening to much of Coil's output you can detect audible traces of the impact this record had on their sound.

If there were a popularly agreed upon 'best Throbbing Gristle' album, this is likely to be it. It was also their final full-length LP and one of their most ambitious. What makes the record great, though many might disagree, is that it SOUNDS like a band in it's death throes. The termination of the Throbbing Gristle project loomed not far off the horizon by the time of this record's release, and some of the expanding psychological gulf between each artist involved is discernable. For example, each of the four artists have a solo piece on this album. The contributions of Chris and Cosey were fairly bright and playful, and the two were engaged in a complicated emotional tryst that was eating the group from the inside as Cosey had long been Genesis' lover. His solo contribution to the album... was a suicide note. Posthumous recollection of a moment he'd had laying on a bathroom floor after overdosing. Peter Christopherson... did his usual sample manipulation thing. In lieu of all of this, it is an album of disparate elements, no longer in any sense besides name was this band unified. Their third and final report was a signal for the end of one of the most interesting, intellectually challenging, boundary-pushing musical groups of all time. A necessary end it was, though, as Genesis has continued on in it's absence succeeding at pushing envelopes and re-inventing the entire game unfettered.

TG's weakest single... but, make no mistake, it's still very good! Just... not as good as some of the others. 'Adrenalin' is a proto-synthpop classic, feels very light and possibly held together by string. Can be as disorienting as a rush of adrenalin, even. 'Distant Dreams (Part 2)' is very ambient, wonderful to listen to in it's entirety. Very much worth picking up, ignore what I said earlier.

Another classic, if you're in the mood for industrial funk! Hard to discount the influence of this record, which lays it's grooves over some very dark ambient textures and fills the mix with some of the best breakdowns recorded. Gets very experimental in places, like only the old industrial acts knew how. Very chilling!

This compilation of SPK materials released in the early part of the 1980s is still probably the best thing of theirs to collect. Graeme Revell was a member of this band, as was Lustmord. Originally conceived in Australia, the product of a mental patient and his doctor, SPK made uncompromising music with a message (typically written in liner notes) and were definitely one of the best early industrial acts. The a-side is harsh and awesome. It showcases just how close the ties to early punk rock were in the industrial sound. 'Kontakt' and 'Slogun' are definitely my favourites. Then you have the b-side, kind of a different animal. The music here is closer to maybe the more experimental neu-deutsche welle, as I believe by this time SPK had migrated to Germany. 'Walking On Dead Steps' is amazing, as are the other two cuts. The vibes you get listening to this album are similar to a lot of the better neo-folk works while being purely industrial/wave; very isolationist. This is absolutely one of the more essential early industrial albums.

Dark synth masterpiece.

I really can't say if Brian Lustmørd was truly the first to make dark ambient music (though it seems very likely, given how long he's been doing it both solo and in SPK), but he is certainly one of the few who have made it this creepy. This is my favourite of his albums. It's not ALL dark ambient, though. 'Comahon Q.Q. Comahon' is an industrial stomper that breaks skulls. Perfect record.

If you were to only own one Skinny Puppy record, this would be it... actually, it's still perhaps the only one you could make a perfect case for owning. Very nihilistic cyberpunk and also very funky, above all. Poetic. Like social breakdown in the age of information, a new cannibalization, new disease, soundtrack fitting for an early Cronenburg film. Perfect record.

... well... there's this one, I guess. The real loveliness of this record is not totally in it's music, but in the unflinching honesty and overall quality of Nivek Ogre's poetic diatribes against the habits of humankind herein.

... Oh, and this!! Worth it for Vol. 3 alone, which has some of the most amazing, dark synth music ever made. Vol. 4 is... ok, but mostly comprised of shoddy live recordings that don't really match the aggression of their live shows typically. The version of 'Love In Vein' on this disc is, however, the best ever.

Special mention here: if you're buying CDs, this one is a solid buy. Absolutely feral production on this live album which features many early classic Skinny Puppy tracks. Usually I don't mention compact discs or cassettes unless they DESERVE a mention, and this one does.

This is actually my favourite Download album... CD only, but still worth getting. This is nowhere near Skinny Puppy in terms of sound, style or feel, but I love it anyway. Probably shouldn't be this high on my list, though.

Largely unsung act whose sound on this record is arguably everything late-1980s industrial OUGHT to be, and squarely in the 'cyberpunk' Clock DVA-esque class of industrial musics. This album HITS a lot harder than a lot of Clock DVA's later albums do, though. If you're coming to industrial from the Ministry/NIN perspective, this is a worthy place to begin a search into older artists of the genre. Very solid record, and my favourite on the basis of tracks like 'Cut Me Loose' and 'Poison'...

... this is likely the best Hula record, though. It's a live album, but it's very well mastered. This will give you a better impression of how great these guys were in their day. Highly recommended!

REALLY good Chakk single, recorded with Richard H. Kirk! Like Hula, these guys were also not as big as previous Sheffield acts, but really deserve more attention than they got. Just listen to it... and then track down all their other singles.

Very Sheffieldesque, unsung classic. It's easy to discern a Cabs and Human League vibe in some tracks, others (i.e. 'Lovetrip') feel almost like precursors to the type of sound later explored by drug-a-delic rave groups, like The Shamen. This is one of those albums that I think of as basically a bridge between those two moments in music... burned by history, but unforgotten by those of us who love and collect this type of thing.

Impossible to overstate the greatness of this record! Very tongue-in-cheek, but the music is seriously good. 'Punch' and 'Manic' are gorgeous high energy dance tracks. On the added mini-LP (which really is absolutely necessary to get) 'Hipnition' is just amazing, a bit of Reggae inspiration but with an awesome sequenced synth bassline underneath. 'Edit the Dragon' is mind-blowing, edited with an intensity you'll just have to hear to understand. Huge record... from the 4AD label, strangely enough! If only THIS sort of thing had been the 4AD sound...

No less necessary, Colourbox's earlier self-titled EP is a classic. 'Shotgun' is probably the best track, but 'Keep On Pushing' nearly manages to top it. Colourbox were making some of the best music ever in their time.

This... is a synthpop masterpiece, and a record that was unjustly forgotten. Both tracks are perfect, the b-side being a little more downtempo than the first. It's an essential find.

Band named after the François Truffaut film. Haven't been able to find as much of these guys' material as I would like, so it's difficult to make a comprehensive statement regarding what would be the best thing they had released, but I do have this and happen to love it. It's got some really great moments, more of that funky Sheffield sound, but this is pretty avant-garde! There is a lot of space in this album, lots of weird ambient sections. 'Groove Jumping' is fucking excellent. Truly a forgotten classic.

Worth tracking down too. This is a really weird, fun record with great sample-work. If you like most of the later Wax Trax! output you'll want to put this in your collection.

Another CD, this one probably essential due to the scope of the entire thing. Let's be honest, unless you've got a lot of cash and patience there's little chance you're going to effectively be able to get all of the vinyl making up this collection of Esplendor Geométrico's output from the years 1980 to 1981 (though it's worth a try). That, and if you're new to the artist, you might as well start with little investment only moving on when you are sure you want to do so. The sounds here are challenging and an affront to the senses. Very modular and angular beats dominate... if you can even call them beats. Most are just jolts, stabs of noise, the sound of an MS20 on the fritz or something. Still, I love this collection... sometimes I'll put it on, just to blot out the sound around me. Wonderful and jarring work.

This is probably my favourite piece of theirs... more guttural, rhythmic noisy LFO sequences! PURE industrial music.

What I'm about to tell you may save your life one day. First, this is a CD only collection of Ministry's early singles and is, in my opinion (especially if you like a lot of the other albums on my list so far) the best starting place when it comes to Ministry. I'll talk about the singles more on their own respective places on my list, because yeah, I'm gonna add them all. Instead, here I'm going to talk about Ministry, the band. Right off, it might be best to think of Ministry as two separate entities. There may be SOME degree of overlap depending on personal taste, so you can take this as a rough outline. On one side, you've got Ministry #1 (circa 1982 - 1986), one of the greatest bands of all time who came out with a series of perfect, excellent wave singles via Wax Trax!, released a derisive but still very COOL synthpop album through Arista, then culminated by a process of becoming jaded and angry enough in one of the best late-1980s industrial EBM records of all time. Then, on the other hand, you have Ministry #2 (circa 1988 - today)... a big steaming pile of leather bike-jacket wearing buttrock shit that started off ok, though a bit different, but eventually just stopped producing anything experimental or interesting altogether. Might as well be completely different bands. Ministry #2 isn't always terrible... I didn't mind some tracks from 'Land of Rape & Honey' or their much-lauded 'ΚΕΦΑΛΗΞΘ', 'Filth Pig' had some nice moments as did 'Dark Side of the Spoon', but after that... I just started asking myself why I've even continued to keep buying their records. Their live shows are still ok... loud as fuck... but you're not going to hear a trace of what made Ministry such a great band to begin with.

When discussing each of the singles making up Ministry's 12" collection, it's difficult to pick favourites. I'll have to go with this, though, since it's so funky! 'Cold Life' sounds very Sheffieldian. The lyrics are great! 'Primental' is just straight funk. It was reworked and retitled 'I Wanted To Tell Her' for their album 'With Sympathy'. 'I'm Falling' is like Chicago's answer to French coldwave. A perfect record, all the way through. Geddit!

Next up, 'All Day'... synthpop masterpiece, arguably their strongest single ever. The lyrics are absolutely great... working class revolt! 'Everyday (Is Halloween)' is also nice, naturally I try to make a habit of putting it on every Hallowe'en if at all possible. I just love the sounds here, above all else. If you only could only get one, I would strongly suggest going with this one.

My third-favourite single by Ministry, better than 'Everyday (Is Halloween)' in my opinion. It's in a class all its own, though. More-so than the rest of the classic four, this is INDUSTRIAL! The sound and sample-work is just so perfect, too! Gotta love the cynical lyrics... and it only got darker from here...

... like on 'Twitch', for instance, Ministry's best LP. Ideally, if you're anything like me, the second you hear this it will just click. I think that's how it happens for most people. Pretty far from these earlier singles in terms of sound, this is industrial EBM at its finest. There are several elements to this album that come together to make it so great and so influential. It's uncompromisingly brutal, it's danceable, it's very grim. 'Over The Shoulder' is probably still my favourite track here, funky and factoral, some of the best use of samples ever. 'We Believe' is also perfect... wait for the line "Can't you hear them laugh?" and the spot on deliverance of a distorted "ha ha ha ha ha." Sends shivers down my spine each time! The general feel of the record is paranoid, angry, broken, nihilistic. There are bits here and there in which shine through a kind of hope that maybe by realizing it's irrationality mankind may one day stop devouring itself and the world around it. A mandatory find for anyone with an interest in industrial music.

Now for something completely different! =P If you would believe Alain Jourgenson (I don't), this was the album that came about by coercion from the label Arista, who were trying to groom Ministry into a new Human League for American shores. Pft. One thing is for sure, Alain REALLY hates this album. Really, really hates it. Buy a copy of this record and take it to one of his shows. If he sees it, he will break it. If you ask him to sign it, he might hit you... and then he'll break it. According to rumour, he's been trying to buy up copies of this to have them permanently destroyed. It will never be reissued, if Alain has anything to say about it, and the best we can hope is that he is unsuccessful because, aside from 'Twitch', this is one of Ministry's greatest albums ever. 'Effigy', 'Revenge', 'Work For Love' (my personal favourite), and 'I Wanted To Tell Her' are all, each one, synthpop classics. The album kind of loses steam halfway through, in my opinion, but this still does not detract from my enjoyment of it... oh, and Alain Jourgenson affects a fake English accent on every track, lol! He needs to just get over it for fuck's sake, it's a great album.

Clock DVA... another of the industrial music pioneers! A lot of stuff here worth getting, but I thought I'd start with my favourite of their singles from their cyber-punk period in the late 1980s and 1990s. Of course, this is just a purely subjective thing. You're probably going to want to get...

... the LP. As far as Clock DVA's later output goes, arguably their best album. Very digital-sounding and sequentially perfect, which makes a nice accompaniment to the subject matter of the work: man's technological growth leading to new forms of control, mass exploitation, corporate ownership and feelings of isolation and insignificance. Adi Newton was a genius, condensing the feel of many of the classic cyberpunk novels into his lyrics, delivered somewhere between a rasp and a whisper and seducing you into a dream of a world just before the crash.

This is another single worth getting. 'Bitstream' is one of the stronger singles from 'Man-Amplified', and the versions of the track here are, in my opinion, superior to the LP version. If you can find it, get it.

This is probably my favourite Clock DVA album, though! It's... a lot different from their later, more familiar output. Funk and jazz sounds predominate the mix, and Adi seems more playful. A lot of post-punk bands had influences in literature, and here there's a pronounced Burroughsian "beat" feel. Just listen to 'Dark Encounter', one of my favourites from the LP. Other gems include 'Beautiful Losers' and 'Breakdown'.

This is, by far, my favourite Cure album. I fell head over heels in love with it at the tender age of 15, fall in love with it again every time I put it on. It's feel is one of solemnity, every bit as grey as the cover suggests. Haunting, ethereal production and music, often very lovely and ambient, if a bit catholic. I've heard it discussed as being mood music for a seance... I'll have to try that some time!

... speaking of sometimes, 'Charlotte Sometimes'. This is my favourite of The Cure's singles. Most of the people I know like 'A Forest' the best. Fools. Well... 'A Forest' is good, just not as good as 'Charlotte Sometimes'... sometimes. While the former is a tale of desperation, lost in a woods of the imagination in search of someone, something that is not really there, this single may as well BE that call of longing, out in the dark where no one living or dead will ever hear it. That's just the sound though, the feel of the single... really, the subject matter here is of the nature of love. To me, anyway, that is how it seems. It's always been important to me, with The Cure, to not look too hard into the poetry, to instead let it speak to the heart. I think, if it works for you to evoke the proper emotional response, some imaginary verse or imagined content/context is probably best left alone.

A pretty nice compilation of the 'The Walk' and 'Let's Go To Bed' singles, the former being my third-favourite Cure single of all time. If it seems like I skipped one, my second-favourite is 'Other Voices' from the album 'Faith.' Listening to these puts me in such a great mood, absolutely wonderful music!

If you would rather your unrequited love songs be a little less existentially bleak, you may as well pick this up. Disintegration is still one of my favourite albums, even if it's not my #1 pick. If you are a naive sensitive romantic type this album will play your heartstrings like a piano in hell. That is, when it's not extolling the pleasures of homo-erotic intercourse. All suitably vague, so no worries... this is where you will find much of the best material The Cure ever released, 'Fascination Street' probably being my favourite.

The Cure has a few different functional compilations of material, of which this is probably the best buy. A collection of most of their singles that does a pretty fair job of introducing someone to The Cure. This is the cd-only version of this compilation, 'Standing On A Beach' was the LP and cassette title... and, for all intents and purposes, this version is probably better.

Absolutely amazing, and one of my well-kept secrets. When I think of perfect 1980s electro records, this comes to the top of my brain. Gorgeous synthwork, sequencing, craftsmanship... I love this record!!!

Italian EBM group, one of the best ever. Alex Spalck was probably my favourite of their frontmen, having wrote some of the best and most memorable lyrics. This is quickly becoming my favourite record of theirs to throw on, as it's a compilation of all of their earlier singles and EPs, of which...

... this is my personal favourite. "You'll never see me naked/You'll never see me happy." Nuff said!

This is still my favourite of Pankow's legit LPs. There's another version I had at a time, the English translated 'Freedom for the Slaves', but... it wasn't the same. Best to stick with this, if you want my honest opinion. If you liked Ministry's album 'Twitch', you will like this as well. 'Touch (I'm Your Bastard)' is probably my favourite track here, but really the whole thing is great. What got me hooked are the high-shelf kicks with echos, I love those.

One of my favourite wave records ever! The titular 'Just Because' is a masterpiece. If you're in the market for a classic synthpop record that you HAVEN'T already heard a hundred times, get this.

This is my favourite D.A.F. album... hahaha! No, I'm not joking! This is an awesome album. It's not the D.A.F. most people think of, which is really great too, but this record is great in a different way. Very perfect, danceable and homosex.

This is my next favourite D.A.F. record though, and more in keeping with their popular perception. A perfect EBM record from, arguably, the masters of that sound. According to a good friend of mine, 'Liebe Auf Den Ersten Blick' is everything he thinks of when he thinks of EBM. I have to agree... it pretty much codifies the sound. Great record!

This is a REALLY good album too, though, and their debut release... not exactly EBM, this is something much more. Almost pure nihilism. They went into a studio and just had the engineers record while they beat the shit out of every piece of equipment they had, and it rocks. If you're into rock music, you should own this album. Compare it to anything else released in 1979 or several years afterward and see if you can find anything that even comes close to this sound. Absolutely perfect!

Before they were D.A.F... THIS is the original EBM album if you want my honest opinion. Front 242 fans cannot continue to make that claim. This is a must own record.

This is my personal favourite of Kraftwerk's massive output! A simple masterpiece. Kraftwerk are probably the most influential group in the world of electronic music.

'Computer-World' or 'Man-Machine' is one of the big questions among rabid Kraftwerk fans. Of course, we all love both albums, but I guess I'm in the 'Computer-World' camp. Every track here is PERFECT. 'It's More Fun To Compute' is probably my favourite, 'Computer Liebe' a close second... it's just beautiful. This is a highly recommended work, and a great place to start if you're new to Kraftwerk.

Another perfect album by Kraftwerk, and another good gateway record for those wanting to get into this seminal group. 'Spacelab' is absolutely classic, 'Das Modell' too! Everyone should own a copy of this.

This is kind of a guilty pleasure of mine, the sound on this record is so deep! Not one of the more widely-regarded classics in Kraftwerk's discography, but all the same, it's one of my top favourites.

Music meant to help plants grow... don't know if it WORKS, but this is a great album anyway! Very spacy, perfect compositions using several Moog pieces, most prominent among them seeming to be the Satellite. It's one of those lead synths that captures your rapt attention when you hear it, being maybe analogous to a flute though more pleasing at times in my opinion. Every track on this album is dreamy, uplifting, optimistic and futuristic. This is certainly another one of those records I feel everyone should own a copy of.

'To Drown a Rose'... my favourite DIJ single ever. As far as the neo-folk genre goes, Death In June are pretty much the only artist I can fully recommend... and how! They are simply one of the best groups ever. Their music is guaranteed to effect you in a meaningful way, most Death In June fans will go through periods in which ALL they can really listen to is DIJ and/or related works, no one will see them for periods of weeks or months. Their music is just that profound. Moving onto the LPs...

... this is arguably their best album. Enough has probably been said of it, it is best to hear it for yourself. It's so good.

This is also an essential masterpiece. 'Giddy Giddy Carousel' and 'Fall Apart' are definitive neo-folk. There are a lot of experimental sounds featured here as well. Thankfully, unlike much of their work in later years... no David Tibet! I really can't stand David Tibet's voice, which is why you will find no Current 93 on this list. They did have one record I thought was ok, though, but it's far from being a "favourite" of mine.

This is one of their better albums, would have been one of their best were it not for the irritating presence of David Tibet in places... still, even that cannot keep me from including 'But, What Ends...' on this list. There are so many great tracks here.

While not their best work, a still very worthwhile and solemn record with many high-points. One of my favourites.

Beautiful Italo disco 12" from 1982. Words simply cannot do it justice.

This is the only thing of theirs I own, another one of those bands I'm still really needing to hear more from after all these years, particularly given how I feel about this 7". This is a perfect, haunting, yearning, lucid post-punk new wave record. Absolute gold.

Probably doesn't belong as high as this on the list, but since I'm trying to keep artists lumped together for coherency... this is an awesome compilation of the series of three 'Murder Ballad' albums produced by Martyn Bates of Eyeless In Gaza and M.J. Harris, a.k.a. Scorn. The music is dark ambient at it's best, the vocals are delivered in a soft falsetto. Lyrics were inspired by the English folk-custom of sing-song rhymes about, really, kind of graphic recollections of gruesome and sordid events. Or something to that effect. Thanks to a friend for loaning this one to me! It's as much a joy to listen to as I'm sure it was to make.

Awesome album! Really funky post-punk group who's music always makes you want to move, kind of obscure too. 'Next One Is Real' is still my favourite track on the record.

I'm kind of a huge Thomas Leer fanboy. Though it came out on Industrial records this isn't what most people would consider one of the "great industrial albums of all time", though there are certainly aspects to it that make it worth owning. First, it is definitely a great minimal electro-punk album. Second... the 'After Cease To Exist' inspired track 'Interferon' is just... amazing. If you're a fool for old electronic music, the sounds of sine-waves and broadcast tones, you'll love this track.

... but yeah, Thomas Leer. This record was one of the early ones of the UK DIY post-punk period. I just love the sound on here... I believe word goes that he recorded it in a flat late at night using some equipment borrowed from Robert Rental, and the reason his vocals sound as hushed and ethereal as they do was because he had to keep quiet so as not to disturb his girlfriend while she slept. The historicity of the document notwitstanding, this is a fantastic record, very simple and dreamy. Worth owning, only if you can find a copy.

I started acquiring some of Leer's later material after discovering he was running a net-label (as I was also at that time). There are three of his albums released in the post-millennial years that are, I daresay, essential. This is one of them. 'Gil's Song' and 'Bullet Train Daydream' are probably my two favourites, they sort of tug at a fond remembrance of electronics as they were back then while also sounding explicitly like electronics as they are today. Ties in, I think nicely, to the overarching theme of his newer label Future Historic. I just absolutely adore this album... but it's CD and mp3 only, I'm afraid.

Just as breath-taking as the last one. The ambient 'Somnatic' is so... lush... textured... gorgeous. It's not something you can easily tempt yourself away from listening to on repeat. The rest of the album is just like that, too... you need this. CD and mp3 only, unfortunately.

Finally, this. I've only actually been able to hear a select few tracks from it, as I don't own it yet... however, on the strength of what I have heard, this is also an absolute necessity. I fell in love with 'Paths of Least Resistance' when I first watched the video for it on youtube. Brilliant and thoughtful. Introspective.

Not just because Thomas Leer was a member of Act am I putting this on the list... it's a great album! Easily my favourite release from the wonderful ZTT label. The other half of Act was Claudia Brücken, of Propaganda, another act from the 1980s that I'm very fond of. 'Snobbery & Decay' is the big single, and one of my favourite singles ever ("Champagne/and Caviar!"), but it's just the icing on the cake.

Speaking of icing! Ok, so this is NOT the record most people would choose as their favourite out of Scritti's discography... most people wouldn't even admit to liking it, period! Not after the strength of much of their earlier work and certainly not in the face of just how irritatingly saccharine sweet bubble gum birthday cake this album is. I would also like to stress that it is NOT in any way an appeal to some stupid sense of "irony" that I enjoy this album... I am serious! I love just about every single track off this album. A large part of the appeal for me is just how cleanly it was produced, how glossy, how strained and restrained. It's as if some horrible, dirty beast might crawl out at any moment to rape and devour us all, but no, it's safe, that beast is behind locked doors, we can dance. I mean, there's just this trace of grit beneath the surface charms of the album, and it can be hard to detect, but it's to be found in the sound... in what the sound SHOULD be sounding like, but has been cleverly tucked away, hidden behind layers of frosting. You can get at it if you play it loud, and/or on a shitty stereo. Try it, you'll see... this is a high caliber b-boy album! Also, I'm not adding any of Scritti's earlier material to this list. Why? Because it's not THAT good. =P

Let's talk about gothic rock for a bit. Sure, it's not my favourite genre ever, and I've always balked at anyone attempting to correlate my tastes with the overarching "gothic movement"... but damnit, there are some gems worth owning, many of which are even, I daresay, some of my favourite albums of all time. Like The Chameleons 'Script of the Bridge'. The brilliance of this album utterly transcends it's genre-tag and stands, in my very honest opinion, as one of the finest post-punk albums ever, and certainly the finest "goth rock" album ever produced. Hence, I'm fond now of telling people I meet who might have a predilection to enjoy gothic rock to... "GET THIS FUCKING ALBUM!" And then, because I curse loudly to people, I am shunned. All the better, that I might be one of the few and proud, adorning my collection with this crown jewel.

This is Soft Cell's debut and, naturally, it's also their best album. Hard not to love. The a-side begins with 'Frustration', which is just one of my favourite tracks ever, very cutting satire of the domesticated and mediocre, an appeal to living a life beyond the boundaries. 'Seedy Films' is another classic... but the best track on the record is A5, 'Sex Dwarf', a gleefully deranged and libertine wave track that you will not want to stop listening to. A lot of the tracks are on the warmer side of electronic music, some Northern Soul influences creep in infrequently. A very great record!

It's not for nothing that Morrissey is considered one of the great poets... among a certain handful of music aficianados, at least... and if you had to own just one Smiths album, this is the one I would implore you to get. The only one, really, that has ever seemed to me to be a cohesive whole and not just a smattering of reworked material or other odds and ends with variable production quality. There is still much in the way of good music to be found on some of their other records, but none of them can touch the simple majesty of this, their self-titled debut. It is here that true Smiths fans found their muse. I wouldn't be caught dead not owning this album in at least some incarnation, and not because it is so fashionable, but because this album is so GOOD. We've had times together, I'll tell you, wandering town for novel experiences in our youth. It begs the same from you, friend, and will reward retrospection later on.

The epitome of post-punk, a classic, from probably the most brilliant post-punk bands... and John Peel's favourite band. This is just an absolute must-have. Aside from being one of their best albums, it's a great place to start for anyone new to The Fall.

Another must-have record from The Fall!!!

Another one I'll recommend, so far my personal favourite on the strength of the b-side. 'Smile' qualifies as one of my favourite Fall tracks of all time.

You're gonna want this, too... b-side is perfect!

While I thought their two previous albums were alright, it wasn't until this came out and I picked up a copy that I became truly enamored with their sound... here, no longer, can we consider Broadcast just a re-hashing of experiment rock musicians The United States of America or brethren. Here, they found something truly unique and so very beautiful that it stands on it's own right alongside or beyond any of the music that may have inspired its creation. R.I.P. Trish Keenan, and thank you.

One of my all-time favourite synthpop albums. It's also one of those things I typically have to put on when I'm drunk. Every track is amazing, and from a purely song-writing perspective this is one of the best written pop albums of all time. I just love this record! The sounds they used fit perfectly, too.

Since this single is a) great and b) not on the LP, I'm obligated to put this on the list. Very hi-NRG disco for Strawberry Switchblade, makes me wish they'd had more singles like this. Well... they do, actually... 'Jolene' was one, but not as good as this!

This is one of my favourite Italo electro tracks, almost unbelievably good!