Melora Creager’s recommendation: “Brian Eno’s second solo record, Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy has been my main model for album making since I started. It was made in 1974, but will never get old. It’s so weird, yet very conventional. I guess they are pop songs. The things just sounds right, like perfect. The song structures and arrangements are tip-top. It’s very dense.

Eno’s first record, Here Come the Warm Jets is just as important, and I often get the two confused. I never know song titles either – I just know this record as a whole, a whole listening experience.

The lyrics are hard to make sense of, but there’s narrative. It’s something about women and Asian spies. I can hear his affection for words- he’s fooling around with them, playing a game. I like to do that too.

His chord progressions and harmonies really get me.The instrumentation is so cool. Are those crickets or guitars? I don’t know! It’s all logic from another dimension and that’s what I’m all about.”

About the guest author, Melora Creager: Creager may be recognized for playing cello for Nirvana on the European leg of the In Utero world tour (including their final live show in Munich), but she also fronts the chamber-rock trio, Rasputina. We’re not going to try to sound all smart and explain what chamber-rock is, but we did supply a track (below) from Rasputina’s seventh album, Sister Kinderhook, a collection of songs about giants, feral children, and, well, a bunch of other stuff that isn’t covered in most of the mp3s in your iTunes library. Make sure to check the Rasputina web site for tour dates.

MP3: Holocaust of Giants from the Sister Kinderhook album