The Velvet Underground and Nico [Original recording reissued] [Original recording remastered]

Granted, while it is hard to imagine Smashing Pumpkins, Jesus & Mary Chain, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Godspeed You Black Emporor!, My Bloody Valentine, (countless others) making the extraordinary albums they did without this album existing, it is also worth noting that this album is still ahead of the times.

35 years on, it still astonishes for its audacity, its experimentation with sound and its originality. Sunday Morning's hushed druggie fall out ambience, Waiting For The Man's pure rock 'n' roll innovation and stark imagery, Venus In Fur's hypnotic and off-kilter swirl of detuned guitars and viola, Heroin's distressing seven minute caustic attack on addiction, the nausea inducing musical headf**k of the closing European Son. It all adds up to an amazing listening experience. You hear the history of almost all alternative music in the 48 minutes and six seconds this album contains.

This deserves to be considered the starting point for anyone interested in alternative music, and anyone considering should stop considering and start purchasing!

Lou Reed tears through a variety of songs, like the slashing, exotic S/M "Venus in Furs," desperate hard-rocking "Run, Run, Run," the surreal junkie ballad "Heroin," and the eerie, soft "Sunday Morning." However, German ex-model Nico leads in the seductive, singsong "Femme Fatale," steady and slow "All Tomorrow's Parties," and the lovely ballad "I'll Be Your Mirror."

The music isn't complex, but it is strangely compelling (such as the wiggling guitar at the beginning of "Black Angel's Death Song," or the tambourines in Nico's songs). Nowhere else could musical compositions like "Sunday Morning" (the tune originally reminded me of a music box) seem so haunting as they do here.

The vocals are excellent, although listeners will probably like one or the other. Lou Reed's high thin voice is a sharp contrast to Nico's accented, husky croon. (Nico left the band after this album) The writing is outstanding, especially since the frank references to kinky sex and drugs are nowhere near as shocking now as they were when the album was first put out.

The sparse, slithering music and excellent singing add solidarity to the reputation of the Velvet Underground as a classic. Dark and brooding, "Velvet Underground and Nico" is an exceptional album.

This is an album of moments; Cale plays piano on I'm Waiting For My Man, and still hasn't bettered it in his long winding solo career. Reed does his drunken hick impression on European Son (in both singing and playing). Morrison and Tucker are the pounding rhythm section that gives the album it's fire.

But the whole thing is eclipsed by the stark, scary and downright brilliant solo confession by Lou Reed, Heroin. The song will never, in my opinion, be beaten; it really did show McCartney how to tell one of those short stories he was so fond of in a 'pop' song (well, um...it's sort of pop...), showed Lennon how to explore the psychadelic soundscape, and invented, er, stoner rock.

The NME recently called them the "parallel universe Beatles", and this is certainly true. Had it not been for their highly contraversial nature of their songs, they would have been equally as big. But that's what makes them so special. As fame and money eluded them, Reed spiralled deeper into sonic experiment. What came next was the brightest and best chapter for the Velvet Underground, but not the last...