Crate Digging: ’90s Edition
Earlier this year we launched Crate Digging as an outlet for our favorite new-to-us under-the-radar finds, curious discoveries, deep digs and other records that we felt like writing about for the sake of nerding out. Since we’re closing out September as the end of ’90s Month, we’re also using this opportunity to do a ’90s-only crate dig. This month, some under the radar favorites from the decade that take the form of twee pop, noise rock, prog, post-rock and more. Come dig with us!
Note: When you buy something through our affiliate links, Treble receives a commission. All albums we cover are chosen by our editors and contributors.
Air Miami – Me. Me. Me.
In the aftermath of the dissolution of beloved Arlington, Virginia indie pop act Unrest, Mark Robinson and Bridget Cross started Air Miami, a band with a similar sense of giddy pop energy and hypnotic jangle, but with an even more playful versatility. Their debut and sole full-length album Me. Me. Me. swings from one style to the next as if they were vines or branches, from the jittery jangle-dance-pop sing-along of “World Cup Fever” to the Stereolab-like lounge-pop of “Afternoon Train” and the shoegaze through the camel’s eye of “Dolphin Expressway.” And the roaring punk of “I Hate Milk,” rising up into its explosive chorus, is so good I’m not even mad that it’s out of the way far too early at track one. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Spotify | Amazon (vinyl)
Änglagård – Hybris (1992)
Progressive rock in the 1990s was very nearly dead. Then: a big bang. Änglagård was a major figure in that new rebirth and this, their debut, was a key element. As much King Crimson as Gentle Giant, as knotted and gnarled as it is beautiful and haunting, these are great big gothic slabs of music, swirling between folk and Mellotrons, yawning elegiac guitars and driving aggressive bass. This is considered one of the most important prog records of all time, not because it made the genre but because, without it, the genre likely would not have returned with the great force its maintained for the past 30 years. – Langdon Hickman
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Art Zoyd – HÄXAN (1997)
Often characterized as a prog band, Art Zoyd is better viewed through the lens of avant-rock, a type of progressive music that is often ironically more theatrically driven than its typically flowery cousin. This record is the group’s score to silent film magnum opus HÄXAN, a history of witchcraft through the ages. It is in parts cold electronics like Tangerine Dream, opulent chamber opera, and mournful dirge-like folk song. Imagine Bowie’s Berlin period extending its cold, bleak light into a truly Brechtian display of terror-in-music. A brilliant and undersung record from a spellbinding group. – Langdon Hickman
Listen: Spotify
Cardiacs – Sing to God (1996)
One of the few prog/avant-garde groups that, like This Heat, Captain Beefheart and The Residents, have a devoted following of psychopaths singing their praise. Here on the group’s masterwork, it arises from a distinctly post-Beatles approach to songwriting, heavy on key modulation and chord borrowing, but done at a schizophrenic pace, such that you never know which end is up or how a harmony might resolve. Add to this truly unhinged singing, like a chorus of children melting to death or XTC playing out the end of the world. It also features “Dirty Boy,” a song so profound in its songwriting acumen it just might make you quit music entirely. – Langdon Hickman
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Come – Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (1994)
In the aftermath of the break-up of slowcore pioneers Codeine, drummer Chris Brokaw moved over to guitar and formed Come in Boston with singer/guitarist Thalia Zedek, cultivating a sound with a kind of haunted blues sensibility and an explosive intensity that descended from the lineage of The Gun Club and had a contemporary in PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me. The band’s second album Don’t Ask Don’t Tell fully fleshed out the ragged snarl of their debut Eleven: Eleven, with moments of low simmering drama (“Finish Line”), eruptive climaxes (“Yr Reign”), eerie beauty (“German Song”), and some of the best riff-driven rock of the decade (“In/Out”). Considering this album was recently the subject of an anniversary reissue campaign, this maybe is a bit more of a proven cult favorite than our Crate Digging criteria typically recognizes, but as far as I’m concerned, there still aren’t enough people who have heard this record. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Discipline – Unfolded Like Staircase (1996)
Matthew Parmenter, main songwriter and singer of Discipline, has forged a solo career of Bowie-esque art rock, including the first record by this group, Push & Profit. So it was to great delight and beautiful confusion that this second record arose, a bleak and despairing progressive rock album that draws as much from Van der Graaf Generator and the prerequisite intensity of King Crimson as it does the more pastoral and dramatic flair of Genesis circa the Gabriel years. This is the kind of prog that could have scored The Crow had the music director gone in a different direction, a richly Byronic and stormy kind of thing. It also happens to be, no small wonder, one of my favorite albums of all time. – Langdon Hickman
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp | Amazon (vinyl)
Dog Faced Hermans – Those Deep Buds (1994)
Formed in Edinburgh and later relocated to The Netherlands, home of their like-minded peers and collaborators in The Ex, Dog Faced Hermans put an experimental spin on punk rock as much estatic as anarchic. The group juxtaposed scratchy post-punk riffs against vocalist Marion Coutts’ yelps and bright bursts of trumpet, and often carved out deeper grooves that gave them the space to pursue more slow-burning and nuanced material, the likes of which form much of their stellar final album, Those Deep Buds. While frantic anthems like opener “Blessed Are the Follies” reveal the band at full strength, it’s in moments like “Volkswagen” and the body autonomy anthem “Keep Your Laws/Off My Body” that DFH showcase the most depth and most rewarding material of their career. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Juno – This is the Way It Goes and Goes and Goes (1999)
Seattle’s Juno only released two full-length albums and a handful of 7-inch singles during their short run, but their debut album (and for that matter, its 2001 follow-up) proved their epic ambition from the get-go. Building on Slint’s template of post-hardcore and post-rock being natural extensions of one another, This is the Way It Goes and Goes and Goes juxtaposes short bursts of riff-driven energy against longer tracks that explore nuanced spaces and slow but fascinating evolution. In moments like the centerpiece “Leave a Clean Camp and a Dead Fire,” they build from subtle, haunting instrumental into a gradual upswing of speed and volume that makes its way toward a thrilling, white-knuckle climax. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: YouTube
Knife in the Water – Plays One Sounds and Others (1998)
Knife in the Water is one of those great, often glossed over, capital “I” Indie Rock bands that young millennials and Gen Z might’ve just missed out on. The Austin project’s self released (U.S.) 1998 debut was my introduction to their ambient-Americana fusion, a wonderful genre splice that reads part Talk Talk, part Galaxie 500. Aaron Blount’s rich tragi-folk tales tell stories of lost lovers (“Seat of Pity”), Hitchcockian bird populations (“Swallows”), and axe-murdered fallen angels (“Send You Up”). This project is ripe for reconsideration, especially considering the present alt-country golden age upon us and the band’s Keeled Scales comeback in 2017. Knife in the Water’s Plays One Sounds and Others is a turn-of-the-millennium classic, and the perfect place for curious listeners to tune in. – Patrick Pilch
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
Laddio Bolocko – Strange Warmings of Laddio Bolocko (1997)
Formed by members of Panicsville and Dazzling Killmen, Brooklyn’s Laddio Bolocko carved out their own uniquely cacophonous niche in noise rock with ferociously heavy instrumentals driven by frantic rhythms and squealing, discordant saxophone. More aligned with the experimental post-punk of This Heat than much of the punchy guitar-driven music of the era, Laddio Bolocko crept into dark and sometimes terrifying places on their debut, whether adopting an eerily cool noir-jazz-rock aesthetic on “The Man Who Never Was” or erupting into full-throttle noise terror on “Nurser.” Given its rhythmic complexities, it’s not necessarily surprising that drummer Blake Fleming later went on to play with The Mars Volta, but Strange Warmings offers an intense, agitated sound that’s never been replicated, or frankly even attempted. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Spotify
Muslimgauze – Hamas Arc
Muslimgauze is Bryn Jones, an English, non-Muslim techno and drone producer whose work explicitly supports Palestinian liberation. Jones began Muslimgauze in 1982 in protest of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. He released multiple records a year in the ’80s, a prolificacy that only intensified during the 1990s. Among those records is 1993’s Hamas Arc, an intense, visceral record and my introduction to Muslimgauze’s unsettling percussive churn. The album was released the same year as the Oslo Accords, interim agreements from which the Palestinian National Authority was formed. Jones, a long-time supporter of the liberation movement, shared his reaction to the agreements: “To be negative is easy, a positive thought is helpful, but until Jerusalem is capital of a total Palestinian State and all Zionist settlers are off the Palestinian map, any peace plan will fail.” – Patrick Pilch
Listen/Buy: Bandcamp
New Kingdom – Paradise Don’t Come Cheap (1996)
As hip-hop and alternative music reached peak eras of creative fertility in the ’90s, the two crossed over both in terms of shared stages—Rage Against the Machine touring with The Roots, Cypress Hill and Ice-T at Lollapalooza—”alternative rap” likewise became a thing, perhaps the best example being the funky genre blends of Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head. Queens duo New Kingdom existed on their own curious plane of psychedelic rap, taking a cue from Digable Planets’ Blowout Comb just a few years earlier and blending samples with live instrumentation into something that feels like its own beat-driven cult-cinema soundtrack. Nosaj and Sebastian bark as much as they rap, set up against a backdrop that merges the booming sound of ’90s-era East Coast rap with ’70s funk groove, scuffed up with distortion and occasional guests such as jazz-fusion organist John Medeski. Though their whole thing might have been a bit weird for either alternative or hip-hop audiences on the scale of, for instance, the Beastie Boys, Paradise Don’t Come Cheap remains a badass slab of escapism fed through pop-culture flashbacks and grooves that go hard. – Jeff Terich
Listen: YouTube
No Knife – Hit Man Dreams (1997)
When San Diego station 91X put No Knife’s “Testing the Model” into rotation in 1997, I mistakenly assumed the local group’s two-minute post-hardcore/new wave anthem, rife with staccato chanting vocals and glorious guitar harmonies, would end up taking off outside the city as well. After all, San Diego had supposedly been the new Seattle for some time and it was bound to pay off eventually, right? It didn’t, but despite the mistaken hype, No Knife released four excellent records during their near-decade together, Hit Man Dreams being one of their best. Taking a few pages from the then-recently split Drive Like Jehu, No Knife merge melodic hooks with a dual guitar attack that can be as ferocious as it is infectious, whether tumbling into the rhythmic dynamics of “Charades” or the glorious waltz of a track. – Jeff Terich
Listen/Buy: Spotify
Plexi – Cheer Up (1996)
More than half a decade before Interpol clad Joy Division-style post-punk in neckties and holsters, Los Angeles’ Plexi merged the gloom of ‘80s-era gothic rock with dense walls of shoegaze guitar and just enough Sunset Strip glam and sleaze to stick the landing. The sound is thrilling and, certainly in the ‘90s, novel enough that it got them signed to Sub Pop and then briefly picked up by Atlantic thereafter, and lead single “Forest Ranger” even landed on MTV once or twice and, weirdly, the X-Games. Though as is the case with so many ‘90s alt-rock almost-success stories, they never really broke through to the mainstream. That being said, Cheer Up—as sardonic a title as you could possibly give an album of shoegaze goth—is rife with outstanding songs that alternate between brooding mist and driving rhythms, the band never taking themselves as seriously as their influences would lead you to believe, but just enough to make everything kick ass. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Spotify
The Receptionists – Last Letter (1999)
If we’re talking unsung twee, we’re talking Receptionists. Formed in 1994, the “Vassar girl pop group” thrived on instinct and whim, enough to convince Ba Da Bing Records to press 1995’s Memo EP and the nearly-comprehensive Last Letter in 1999. Where production lacks, songwriting fills the cracks. Receptionists’ natural aptitude for both melody and lyricism makes Last Letter a must listen for college radio fans and outsider art heads alike. Armed with penny whistles, toy pianos, maracas, and mandolins, Receptionists use any and all available instruments with a carefree, yet confident creative regard. Last Letter is a raw portrait of three young musicians tapping into the source of unfettered and unharried creativity. – Patrick Pilch
Listen: Spotify
Six Finger Satellite – Severe Exposure (1995)
For several years now I’ve had Six Finger Satellite’s Severe Exposure on my Discogs wantlist in the vain hopes that one day a vinyl copy will show up at a price lower than $100. I’m still waiting (and questioning when the time will come that I say “fuck it” and call it a “treat yourself”), but the reason it’s at the top of my list is because few records from the ’90s seethe with this kind of robot menace, this virulent skinny-tie mannequin scrape, this jittery death-glam roar. Like a meaner cousin to Dayton’s Brainiac, Providence, Rhode Island’s Six Finger Satellite (featuring The Juan Maclean’s John Maclean on guitar and synth) nodded to post-punk-era iconoclasts Chrome and Devo with a touch of their own snarling intensity. During an era in which alt-rock underwent a prolific period of Moogsploitation, 6FS found new definitions for attack, decay, sustain, and release. – Jeff Terich
Listen: Spotify
Randy Weston – Khepera (1998)
Jazz underwent a period of cultural resurgence in the 1990s thanks to hip-hop fusions like A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory, which prominently featured live bass from prolific legend Ron Carter. But plenty of legends of jazz’s past were still finding new paths of rhythm in their own recordings, including Pharoah Sanders and Sonny Sharrock. Pianist Randy Weston had been performing for nearly five decades by 1998, working with the likes of Cecil Payne and Kenny Dorham before embarking on a prolific career as a bandleader, his work frequently centered around African motifs and influences. Khepera finds Weston working with Pharoah Sanders, whose presence is undeniable throughout the album, a fascinating and eclectic exploration of connections between African and Chinese cultures. It’s a big album to summarize in a hundred words or so, but it’s among the most vibrant and richly rewarding jazz albums of the ‘90s whether through the big band style of “Prayer Blues,” reminiscent of third-stream Charles Mingus (with whom Weston had also performed), the relatively stark interplay of upright bass and piano on “Boram Xam Xam,” or the low-key blues groove of “Mystery of Love.”
Listen: Spotify
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