What album(s) was a musical epiphany for you?

[DMK]

A lot of Coltrane, Ayler, Brotzmann, Dolphy plus the Sex Pistols and PiL, several Beatles discs and many, many more.

Most recently, it was a disc by a group called Sol Invictus. The disc is "In a Garden Green" which I've now owned for almost a year. I love it but I can't say why. It's dark and brooding, folky, avant garde and it just hit me in a way I can't explain. I play it at least once a week and it never fails to entrance me. It's an extremely complex disc and I hear different things in it every time I listen. I've only been able to find one other recording by this group and it was also good, although it didn't live up to the first - and I can't explain that, either! But like many, many other records, it was a kick in the pants in the sense that every time I think I have some idea of what music is or should be, something like this comes along and lets me know that music is an infinite universe and someone out there will have a muse that will blow my ideas away!

[Dusty Chalk]

I've done this before, but thought I'd rehash anyway:

Aerosmith, Rocks -- hardest thing I ever heard up to that point, by far, and upon first listen, I couldn't take it. Hadn't gotten into Black Sabbath yet. I have since learned to embrace the dark side.

Skinny Puppy, Vivisect VI -- I wanted my mommy the first time I heard this. The stuff of nightmares. I liken it to seeing your first truly gory horror film.

Various artists, Dry Lungs V -- my first album-length excursion into noise. Still one of my favourites. The doors were opened by Controlled Bleeding ("Swallowing Scrap Metal" from the Penetration compilation), but this is the one that give me a good shove into the room.

Talk Talk, Spirit of Eden -- a truly abstract revelation. I had never heard an album as patient as this one (well, some moments here and there, such as the climactic tracks of Chris Squire's Fish Out Of Water and Steve Hackett's Voyage of the Acolyte -- but those are not fair comparisons; it's a different kind of patience), and certainly not from the previously very poppy The Colour of Spring. There was something about it that just made me keep coming back.