3 Of The Strangest Albums Ever Recorded – Part 2

Double albums that turned rock music on its head

Joakim Haugland, who runs the Smalltown Supersound label, recently published a note name-checking three relatively obscure experimental rock double albums from the early 1990s.

I spent the weekend (re-)discovering these three records.

Surprised how well they’ve aged, I decided to write them up for a follow-up post to 3 Of The Strangest Albums Ever Recorded.

As Haugland writes,

“These albums gave the middle finger to the classic double albums of the 70s rock megalomania, and they made their own weird version of, and a new definition, of what a double album could be. In all fairness it has to be said that Minutemen, Hüsker Dü and Sonic Youth all build a bridge between the big/epic 70s dinosaurs and the 90s outsider doubles.”

Which is an interesting point.

For ambitious rock bands of the 1970s, the double album had been the ultimate statement – ever since the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had resorted to the format at the peak of their creativity and commercial success.

Following in their footsteps, bands like Led Zeppelin or The Who released widely acclaimed, conceptual double albums. Same goes for all the big progressive rock bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis, ELP and Yes.

Extending their playtime up to 90 minutes, these records seemed to say: Look, a single album is not even sufficient to spell out our full artistic vision. We need more space!

Such delusions of grandeur, however justified or not, were indeed crushed by the 1990s double albums below.

These bands demonstrated new ways of toying with the format, deeply influencing indie and alternative music moving forward; taking cues from krautrock and free jazz, genres where thinking in vinyl sides rather than songs was quite the norm, at least when recording.

Without further ado, here are 3 of the strangest (double) albums ever recorded.