Intelligentsia - Paroxysm (2000)

Formed by a group of Harvard students in 1998, Intelligentsia were an anomaly in a music scene still dominated by Britpop. Literate, condescending and extraordinarily pompous, the band made music so arch and abstract that the few people who understood the musical and scholastic allusions were simultaneously delighted at the breadth of their learning and disgusted by their own hideous conceit. The album is a panoply of nebbish puns, arcane references and smirky contempt, with sarcastic vocals undermining purposely redundant riffs and sublime classical references accompanied by the most deliberately vacuous lyrics ever commited to acetate. Described by John Peel as:

"A low point in human history, ten times worse than Talking Heads. Hideous, contrived, hate-filled and misanthropic. Truly, utterly demoralising. Do not listen to this album."

Paroxysm
1 - Atlas Chugged
2 - Public Domain Stream
3 - Henry Cavendish
4 - On The Aborigines of The Specious
5 - Richard Ellmann
6 - I Mill, Milieu?
7 - Recrementitious Bildungsroman
8 - Tits And Ass And Shit
9 - How Brechtian?
10 - Anaemic Arrivistes
11 - Empfindsamkeit

Lilian Katt - Onomatopoeia (1999)

After the overdose deaths of Kim Bjellert and Loki McRoki, Lilian Katt retreated from public view. She re-emerged in 1999 as a calmer, more reflective individual. Gone was the agitprop popinjay of Lesbians fame, replaced by a self-possessed Earth Mother of sorts, fusing folkish solemnity with a ruthlessly irreverent sense of humour. Onomatopoeia is a total departure from Katt's previous oeuvre and draws more from the antebellum European tradition, giving the album a delightful Weimar sheen whilst also imbuing the songs with a strange, rather unearthly sense of timelessness.

Onomatopoeia
1 - Once More Unto The Beach
2 - Accidental Narcissist
3 - Catastrophes Of Nostalgia
4 - I Almost Never Don't
5 - Kissing The Floor (Alcoholism)
6 - Hapless As A Lagoon
7 - Muttering Gutteral Utterance
8 - Lunching With The Pissheads
9 - Three Quarks For Muster Mark
10 - Lunatic Fringe (Unfortunate Haircut)
11 - Bimbo Eruption
12 - Boxes In Trees
13 - Fester Under My Malevolent Glare
14 - You Cling Like A Limpet