Bangers

In honor of a Chinese fortune teller saying I was born with great taste in music (amongst other eerily accurate things), I’ve decided to compile a list of albums that are near perfect 10’s. By this, I simply mean these are albums I can listen to from top to bottom with no skips. In essence, every single track is a banger.

Each album listed here elicit a certain kind of emotion I can’t stop wanting to feel. As for what kind of emotions those are, I don’t exactly know. They simply fall on the spectrum of make-your-pupils-dilate-as-dopamine-floods-your-brain.

I’ll include here what astrological transits I was having when I was first listening to these, as it sheds light on my emotional state of their respective eras.

Here they are, listed in order of my favorites:

The World EP. 2: Outlaw [2023] - Ateez

Spotify

Track List

This World

Dune

Bouncy (K-Hot Chilli Peppers)

Django

Wake Up

Outlaw

I was listening to this on repeat the blistering summer of 2023 while I walked habitually from the Upper West Side to Chinatown in Manhattan. That point in my life was simultaneously the most healed yet the most apathetic I had ever been. It was the stage in life when I have uncovered so much of my rotting behavioral patterns and beliefs and aired them out to dry, yet nothing new was in place yet. I was a blank slate and constantly felt unmoored. Hearing this album all the way through the first time induced some kind of religious experience. For someone who doesn’t have an ounce of religious inclination, it was a bit shocking. I truly think this album anchored me from complete mental disintegration.

Transits: T. Pluto in 11h Capricorn square N. Moon in 8h Libra.

Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge [2004] - My Chemical Romance

Spotify

Track List

Helena

Give ‘Em Hell, Kid

To The End

You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison

I’m Not Ok (I promise)

The Ghost of You

The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You

Interlude

Thank You for the Venom

Hang ‘Em High

It’s Not a Fashion Statement, It’s a Fucking Deathwish

Cemetery Drive

I Never Told You What I Do for a Living

I lived in LA at the time, and driving took up 1/3 of my time. This album was on repeat while I zipped from the 10 to the 101 on the daily. I had no direction in life and had no idea who I was. I just knew that whatever this emo shit was, I liked it. It was the blast on loud while I hurried up and waited in traffic, completely unaware of what to do if not go to school. Looking back, the pitfalls of being raised to think going to college was the most important thing anyone can achieve was so detrimental to my development. Because once you’ve done that, what else is there? This whole album kind of contained all the rage and grief I had about life that I couldn’t put into words.

Transits: T. Saturn in 5h Cancer conjunct N. north node, square N. Saturn in 8h Libra | T. Chiron in 11h Capricorn conjunct N. south node, square N. Saturn in 8h Libra.

MAXIDENT [2022] - Stray Kids

Spotify

Tracklist

Case 143

Chill

Give Me Your TMI

Super Board

3Racha

Taste

Can’t Stop

Circus (Korean Version)

It has been an internally turbulent few years when this came out. I was at the height of a deep depression that I didn’t know what to do with. It was bad to the point that the therapist I had decided she couldn’t ethically continue to work with me, and I was too fucked up to find a new one. To this day, I can’t quite detangle how things got that bad, I only have a vague idea of which triggers pushed me off a cliff. It was a perfect storm to open my eyes and made me stare squarely at all the self destructive habits I’ve carried since I can remember. This album was like a little high house in that storm, it was upbeat and happy for the most part, but Taste thrown into the mix scratched the itch I had for intensity. I was a Stray Kids fan already, but I cherry picked tracks across their entire body of work for a playlist. Maxident however, worked as a whole play through. It was manic and playful, everything I felt like I lacked at that time. To this day, I think it’s one of their best albums.

Transits: T. Pluto in 11h Capricorn square N. Pluto in 8h Libra | T. Neptune in 1h Pisces conjunct N. Sun | T. Saturn in 12h Aquarius trine N. Mars & Saturn in 8h Libra | T. Jupiter in 1h Pisces conjunct N. Ascendant

TRON Legacy [2010] - Daft Punk

Spotify

Tracklist

Overture

The Grid

The Son of Flynn

Recognizer

Armory

Arena

Rinzler

The Game Has Changed

Outlands

Adagio for Tron

Nocturne

End of Line

Derezzed

Fall

Solar Sailer

Rectifier

Disc Wars

C.L.U

Arrival

Flynn Lives

Tron Legacy (End Titles)

Finale

The only word I can use for the era of life when this album came out was fearful. This was the time when after the great economic fuck up of 2008, I was unemployed for a prolonged period of time, completely blamed myself for it, and developed quite a few phobias. I was too anxious to sleep, drive, or even go outside, and to break up from a bad relationship on top of all that seemed insurmountable. In fact, recognizing that it was a bad relationship didn’t even cross my mind, despite how unhappy I was. I had so much to learn in life but I emotionally shut down instead. This album came about and it allowed me to escape into my own world, along with a new troop of equally mentally unstable friends that I managed to make at the time. We were all different ages, going through different shit, but what we shared was our willingness to fabricate through writing, a different world. A more palatable world. Kind of like Tron but with less LED lights.

Transits: T. Uranus in 1h Pisces conjunct N. Ascendant | T. Saturn in 8h Libra conjunct N. Mars & Saturn, square N. nodes | T. Neptune & Chiron in 12h Aquarius conjunct N. Mercury

Artwork [2009] - The Used

Spotify

Tracklist:

Blood on My Hands

Empty with You

Born to Quit

Kissing You Goodbye

Sold My Soul

Watered Down

On the Cross

Come Undone

Meant to Die

The Best of Me

Men Are All the Same

I didn’t really get into this album at the time of release, but almost 10 years after its initial debut I discovered that it was a banger. At the time I had a little thing called limerence that was running my life. It sounds romantic, being enraptured by a person but in actuality, it was just a dopamine roller coaster induced by uncertainty. Regardless of the cause, this album really let that desperate sad romantic ideal flourish. It’s angry, sad, and primal. What balm I couldn’t procure from real life, I got it from scream singing every track. I had been obsessed with The Used in the early 2000’s but the fascination faded as my taste changed. This one really plunged me back into the euphoric and agonizing screaming as a way to purge some emotions I didn’t know how to interpret.

Transits: T. Pluto in 11h Capricorn conjunct N. south node, square N. Saturn in 8h Libra | T. Chiron in 1h Pisces conjunct N. Ascendant

Poem [2000] - Delerium

Spotify

Tracklist:

Terra Firma

Innocente

Aria

Fallen Icons

Underwater

Myth

Nature’s Kingdom

Daylight

Temptation

A Poem for Byzantium

Amongst the Ruins

For the first time in life, I was discovering agency. Now looking back, I didn’t explore it far enough, but just enough to realize that I don’t have to like what my mom likes. And she definitely did not like music. So in a way, this was my foray into realizing that music was an important part of life. I also discovered that I didn’t like silence when I was busying myself with random arts and crafts projects, or when I was falling asleep. I preferred the presence of sounds. Delerium was an early favorite, as they seemed to be able to weave dreams and reality into something I could hear. Every track felt mystical and inspiring, and oddly made me feel nostalgic for a place and time that never really existed. Listening to this album made me feel like an airy forest nymph, gliding in a sunlit, tree pillared place full of wonder and devoid of bugs.

Transits: T. Neptune in 12h Aquarius conjunct N. Venus | T. Uranus in 12h Aquarius trine N. Mars & Saturn in 8h Libra

Formica Blues [1997] - Mono

Spotify

Tracklist:

Life in Mono

Silicone

Slimcea Girl

The Outsider

Disney Town

The Blind Man

High Life

Playboys

Penguin Freud

Hello Cleveland!

I discovered this album after watching Great Expectations. While the film itself was tepid, the soundtrack was amazing. One of the most notable songs being Life in Mono, which prompted me to listen to this entire album. This was the time when I was very enamored by cinema, and let’s admit it — films were beautiful at this point in time. I had no concept of the business and production of what goes into film, just a romantic idea that one day, I want to make films too. This was the era when I made up my mind to go to film school and learn how the sausage was made. Even though my preconception of it was that it was all fairy dust and dreams.

Transits: T. Jupiter in 1h Pisces conjunct N. Ascendant, square N. Neptune & Midheaven in 10h Sagittarius | T. Pluto in 10h Sagittarius conjunct N. Uranus

The Virgin Suicides (Original Motion Picture Score) [2000] - Air

Spotify

Tracklist:

Playground Love

Clouds Up

Bathroom Girl

Cemetery Party

Dark Messages

The Word ‘Hurricane’

Dirty Trip

Highschool Lover

Afternoon Sister

Ghost Song

Empty House

Dead Bodies

Suicide Underground

I distinctly remember listening to this CD at a now defunct Chapters book store before the movie even came out. It was one of those instances where as soon as the headphones covered my ears, I was in awe of how music can sound like that. Although to this day, I’m not really sure what that is. One of the reasons I even saw the film was because I was already familiar with its music, and that film solidified something in me at that time — that I MUST make films. Listening to this soundtrack also coincided with my first hypomanic episode, which in hindsight, was definitely triggered by travel + having a first crush. With adequate dopamine flowing through my brain, everything became easy. I was optimistic, I was making friends, I found things funny, and most baffling of all, people found me funny.

Transits: T. Neptune in 12h Aquarius conjunct N. Venus in 12h Aquarius | T. Jupiter in 2h Aries opposite N. Pluto & Moon in 8h Libra | T. Saturn in 3h Taurus opposite N. Jupiter in 9h Scorpio

And Now

While that was a fun exercise, what I found astounding is that I wrote a little something for every album and then added transits after the fact. To see the astrological alignments correspond to those given periods of life in an eerily accurate way and to some degree, influence music taste is exciting, revealing, mystifying, and makes me love astrology even more. This was actually the first time I looked at transits that took place prior to when I started learning how to read charts, and it doesn’t disappoint.

On these albums were tracks I forgot about, but know every word to as soon as I hear them. They hold within the notes fragments of what it felt like the first time I heard them. Music is a funny thing, I loved it so much that I was willing to part with it when nothing resonated for a drought of almost a decade (there’s quite a gap from 2010 - 2022). There were rare one offs every once in a while, but music was changing. Full albums didn’t seem to matter once streaming was available, and I lost the desire to hunt down music amidst all the noise that was popping into being such as social media vying for every second of attention, and simply being an adult.

Nowadays, I find myself more drawn to podcasts and audiobooks. Perhaps this is just how a brain ages, or perhaps the beauty of music lies dormant for me until something else comes along in the future that sweeps me into the ethereal vortex of pure vibes that I miss so much.