Discussion: What Albums Were Ahead of Their Time?

[Holden]

I was recently thinking about this question, and looked into it a little bit. I was wondering, what albums do you all think were incredibly forward thinking? Maybe they sound like they should have come out a decade later, maybe they have techniques that would later become popular, maybe they were a pre-cursor to a genre, or maybe even nothing has sounded like them since, and we're still waiting on their influence to hit.

Some examples that I can think of:

Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Remain in Light is sort of groundbreaking. The use of loops and other techniques was unheard and would become popularized in electric music decades later.

Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes
It's hard to put my finger on it, but this album sounds so nineties it blows my mind that it was released in the eighties.

Wire - Pink Flag
This album was post punk before punk was even able to slow down. The genre of post punk feels like it is only just now, in 2021, getting off of the ground, but this one was that before it was cool.

The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico
I mean this album created 30,000 bands, as the saying goes. Not much else to say about it.

The Stooges - The Stooges
The opposite of Pink Flag, this album feels so brash and bold, this was proto-punk before punk was even conceived. Seven years before the Ramones hit the scene, this album broke tracks that feel fresh out of late seventies punk.

[ordinaryperson]

Slint's Spiderland

Spiderland seems like an album that you would find from just randomly browsing Bandcamp. I'm shocked that it came out the same year as Nevermind, Blue Lines, Achtung Baby, Loveless, and Ten.

Suicide's self titled debut

This album seems somehow both ahead of it's time and of it's time. The lyrics are definitely fueled by 70s paranoia but the music could fit in with late-80s/early 90s industrial music.

[Henry]

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon

The Beatles - Abbey Road

The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's

The Beatles - Rubber Soul

Ray Charles - Modern Sounds In Country and Western Music

Todd Rundgren - Something/Anything?

The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds

Miles Davis - Bitches Brew

The Mothers of Invention - Freak Out!

King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King

[Nick]

Most of Black Sabbath's early stuff, really. Master of Reality came out in 1971 and it practically invented doom metal.

[Schüttelbirne]

I don't think any album can be ahead of its time, because it's always a product of its time. Even if it sounds unlike anything at the time, that only shows that they wanted to be different than other artists. "Ahead of its time" is just a phrase some people coined because "of their own time" is apparently not good enough...
The closest thing to it would maybe be these:

Karlheinz Stockhausen | Gesang der Jünglinge & Kontakte
Raymond Scott | Soothing Sounds for Baby, Vols. 1-3

[Krurze]

Raymond Scott | Soothing Sounds for Baby, Vols. 1-3

Never heard of this one until now, pretty damn incredible upon first listen.

Another one I'd like to add is Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4. It would be considered a pretty progressive house album if released today, and it was recorded in 1981.

[Rob]

The genre of post punk feels like it is only just now, in 2021, getting off of the ground, but this one was that before it was cool.

Uh what? Post-punk defined much of the rock sound of the late seventies and especially early eighties. Joy Division, U2, The Cure, The Fall, Echo & the Bunnymen, XTC, The Sound, Gang of Four... It has a resurgence as of late for sure, but I doubt it will ever become as big again as it was then.

[Holden]

The genre of post punk feels like it is only just now, in 2021, getting off of the ground, but this one was that before it was cool.

Uh what? Post-punk defined much of the rock sound of the late seventies and especially early eighties. Joy Division, U2, The Cure, The Fall, Echo & the Bunnymen, XTC, The Sound, Gang of Four... It has a resurgence as of late for sure, but I doubt it will ever become as big again as it was then.

Oh my goodness, this might be the silliest thing I’ve ever said. I must have been really tired when I wrote this. Those are some of my favorite bands too, eighties post punk is one of my favorite genres, thank you for pointing this out.

[Gillingham]

Silver Apples' debut 'Silver Apples' certainly springs to mind. Still can't believe it's from 1968 whenever I listen to it.
Portishead would still sound kind of futuristic in 2008 while being heavily inspired by Silver Apples.

[acroamor]

One of the classic examples would be Charanjit Singh's Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat, which basically predicted acid house by accident a decade before it became a genre.

[TheLastEnemy]

The first half a dozen albums by Kraftwerk were a long way ahead of their time

[Jackson]

The first few PCMusic singles, especially Sophie's Bipp in 2013, are a good example to me. It was a deep-underground movement at first that has inspired the "hyperpop" genre that, while still niche, has grown more popular (see Charli XCX and Caroline Polachek using AG Cook and and Danny L Harle as producers on recently acclaimed albums).

[Madzong]

Headless Chickens - Body Blow

This NZ band was ahead of its time especially when thinking about the whole rock/electronica thing around ‘97-‘99 where a lot of rock bands started to tweak or change their sound.

They were a big influence on the band ‘Garbage’ and some of their music was made into a loop for one of the tracks from their first album.

[Brad]

220px-Frank_Zappa,_Ahead_of_Their_Time.jpg

[Madzong]

The Doors debut self titled album.

This was a huge influence on Patti Smith (the poetry and rock fusion) and Iggy Pop (just look at the cover of the Stooges first album).