The Doors - Strange Days - DCC Vinyl Mastered By Steve Hoffman #0165 (pbthal rip)

To me, this is a gorgeous work of dark romanticism, a beautiful black pool in moonlight. The acoustic textures of drum, guitar, keyboards and voice are completely in sync: all four are liquid, hazy and always slightly manic. The record creates a tremendously potent mood of sweet melancholy, of dream, of vaguely heartbroken yet nonetheless ecstatic love. As ineffably poignant as poetry (and containing some rather good poetry), it is a strange and wondrous combination of love, hope, and violence that has become, probably irrevocably, part of my soul. I cannot really imagine California without this record informing my visions. And what visions "Strange Days" evokes! The voice of an arguing couple coming down from a lit window at night... A lonely poet wandering the beaches of LA at high tide, beginning to dance... Cars going everywhere and nowhere down the highways of California... Rain falling on the pages of a copy of one of Freud's works.... Red wine in a glass... something beautifully, unmistakably American, Californian, absolutely L.A. and nothing else, yet framing only all the most aesthetically perfect aspects of the culture, cutting out everything shallow and blunt... doing nothing less than redeeming L.A. from the bleary eye of its drunken daylight. --Anton Dolinsky