Yellow Kitchen - Mushroom, Echoway, Kleidose (1998)
From sampling Starcraft to getting real close to the unique vibes on Tortoise's TNT (particularly the drum machine tracks), it's easy and in the same time hard to believe this was released in the same year as those, coming from an obscure band in Seoul, which was far from being the musical powerhouse it is today...
However, the most striking feature of the album is how successfully it conveys the feeling of being in a dream, rather than simply conveying an altered state of the mind. While some of the musical elements might be more or less familiar, as a whole it sounds incredibly fresh and hard to pin down - a feeling that can be hard when you have, like me, 20 years experience of listening to a huge variety of music. For that alone, I cherish this album very much and might grow into one of my all-tine favorites.