Probably the strangest album to regularly make critics' Top 100 Records of All Time, Trout Mask Replica is a landmark of idiosyncratic and visionary music-making. Don Van Vliet (christened Captain Beefheart by one-time colleague Frank Zappa) and The Magic Band rehearsed this record for over a year, translating Beefheart's ideas into fully fleshed-out pieces: although the record on first listen appears spontaneous and improvised, it is in fact carefully constructed, as the instrumental versions on the Grow Fins box-set demonstrate. Trout Mask Replica fuses blues, freeform jazz, rock, and Beefheart's surreal lyrics into an initially perplexing and daunting blend, in which the two guitars, drums and bass of10 seem to be playing four different songs at once--but over time, the music's angular, discordant shapes and rhythms not only begin to make sense, but take on an eccentric beauty. For those unfamiliar with Beefheart's work, check out the definitive compilation The Dust Blows Forward, or start with the luminously remastered Safe As Milk and Mirror Man. Both are essential records, but the man's mythical reputation begins and ends with the legacy of Trout Mask Replica. --Burhan Tufail