In the face of year-end autogenerated posts, here are 12 albums that are all unavailable on streaming and will make nobody's automated lists.
1. Legowelt
@legowelt_official - Astro Cat Disco. Techno/idm that lives up to what the album title promises.
2. Angus Maclise - Dreamweapon I, II, III. Powerful minimalist archival recordings that give a glimpse into the mysticism, politics, and sexuality of the late 1960s.
3. Aphex Twin - 26 Mixes for Cash. Adaptations, every artist on here is gold in their own right. Also, You Can't Hide Your Love is one of the hardest hitting dance tracks ever made.
4. The Monks - Black Monk Time. One of the albums that led to punk rock being a thing.
5. John Cale
@therealjohncale - Sun-Blindness Music. Drone/minimalist music for organ and guitar. It makes other minimalist music seem maximalist. CD-era release from archival recordings.
6. Dopplereffekt
@__dopplereffekt__ - Calabi Yau Space. Intricate dark rhythmic ambient melodies that leave diatonic scales far behind.
7. Ensemble Syntagma - Rosa e Orticha. Particularly Don Paolo da Florentia's Amor Da Po'Che Tu Ti Maravigli. Led me to read through someone's dissertation on medieval music notation and theory.
8. Oneohtrix Point Never
@eccopn - Memory Vague (video album). If you want to feel like almost crying because someone washing their hands with soap is just too beautiful, this is the place to do that.
9. Anthology of American Folk Music. For better or worse, this album more or less defined folk music (and other things) for the 1960s and beyond.
10. Charlemagne Palestine
@charlemagnepalestine - Four Manifestations on Six Elements. Pianos that sound like a wall of harmonic exploration.
11. Sarah Davachi/Dicky Bahto
@sarahdavachi - Music for a Bellowing Room. Drones for days in one of Davachi's hardest hitting albums.
12. Sleeparchive
@sleeparchive_official - Spring Flowers. Sparse and beautiful ambient EP.
Many of these are available on Bandcamp. Some are on video sites. For the rest, the methods and ethics of obtaining a copy is left as an exercise for the reader.
