I thought way too much about this

[gybefan2000]

Look at this dumb article: Top 10 albums every music snob name-checks. Honestly, since when are Dylan or Wilco the sole domain of "snobs"? And I've seen many a music snob to hate Mars Volta (no opinion on them personally). On the other hand I think they're right about Moon Pix, which is one of my favorite albums, and the specific aspects of its appeal.

So here's my own list, a better one:

• the Incredible String Band - 5,000 Spirits or Layers of the Onion
  
• Albert Ayler - Live in Greenwich Village
  
• Patty Waters - Sings (I was gonna say Sonny Sharrock, but I think some of the Sharrock love comes from Linda's Watersesque wailing on Black Woman)
  
• Can - Future Days (Tago Mago = the inaccurate stereotype pick)
  
• Art Bears - The World As It Is Today
  
• Anthony Braxton - For Alto (as overwhelming a discography as Ayler's, but more contemporary, less mythology. Any Cecil Taylor album except Unit Structures would work equally well)
  
• Iannis Xenakis - La Legende d'Eer (seems to have an aura of forbidding obscurity lacking in Cage, Penderecki or Stockhausen)
  
• This Heat - probably Deceit (usually Gang of Four would get this slot, but that's been inaccurate since '04 or so)
  
• AMM - Newfoundland or The Crypt
  
• Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth (or Raincoats, but not the self-titled one)

A few others I could have included: Borbetomagus; Otomo Yoshihide/Ground Zero; Laura Nyro, Peter Brotzmann, Fushitsusha (and/or Les Rallizes Denudes); maybe Pere Ubu and Talk Talk; Vladislav Delay (as representative of the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction axis); Organum; the productions of Les Légions Noires.

Yeah. Anyway, watch this video only if you're not acrophobic, and beware the bad soundtrack. A minute into this I was curled up on the floor in horror:

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