Three for me come to mind.
The first two are semi-related, in my mind at least.
Computerwelt and Remain In Light, both from 1981, set a standard for what music would become. They’re the future before the future had arrived - looping arrangements, repeating sounds, aiming for a very “assembled” type of music.
And yet, they’re captivating for me for being so far removed from what modern music has become at the same time. These albums aren’t assembled in a DAW, they’re entirely crafted in the analogue world, almost perfect but imperfect. They’re great albums from a songwriting perspective anyway, but I always wonder if the fact they spawn from this exact moment in time is what makes them so perfect for me.
The other is The Sophtware Slump by Grandaddy. This one is harder to explain, if you try to break it down it isn’t hugely experimental, influential, groundbreaking or even that popular in the wider sense. But something about it is so utterly of its time and timeless at the same time.
And, maybe it’s just the people I know, but I have friends and family who remember and cherish this album. You could play someone certain tracks and they might enjoy them, but something about putting all the tracks together and listening to the album just creates that classic special journey.
Interested in what other albums have special meaning for people, even if they’re not entirely sure why.
Yeezus.
No song alone reaches a 10/10, except maybe 1, but taken as a whole, the album is a 10/10 experience. The album is essentially alone in it's own subgenre of hip hop. Everything that came after has been influenced by it, or more accurately, influenced against it. Often regarded as a work of minimalism, but that is a mistaken notion. The album has more in common with architecture, specifically brutalist architecture.
Lyrically, the album is unfinished. Almost all of it is first drafts and sketches of lyricsz but Kanye seems to have taken influence from Thom Yorke here in the sense that the words don't matter, only the sounds they make and how they fit into the sonic realm he and Mike Dean were creating. Kanye would never make as good an album again, and while being a perfect album, everything released after expanded only on the albums weaknesses and not his strengths. He has not released a single album I rank higher than a 7/10 since, and I am incredibly doubtful he is capable of making anything this good again. But he still made this album.
Some people say this was his response to EDM and dubstep, and while I think that it may be true, at least in the sense that it foretold he was moving in the direction of responding to trends instead of creating his own, the album is too alienating for people looking for a dance record. This is not that. The EDM conventions are distorted and then stripped away to reflect an unquiet suffering mind. This is not an ecstasy trip, it is a memory of an ecstasy hangover.