Album: Merge.

Release date: March 31, 1993.

Track: 2.

Mood: Grease paint, rain, and hot dogs with lots of onion.

The Crow was a mythical flick in the summer of ’94. My parents took me to Ireland in the summer, and everywhere you went, that poster beckoned you. The Quad poster in the UK was burnt in my head and for years I searched for a copy, eventually scoring one in Nottingham. It felt perfect, with Brandon Lee’s visage half lost in the high contrast, eerie poster.

My dad had subscriptions for Newsweek and Time and Brandon Lee’s shocking untimely death resonated as I watched the film with my brother in the cinemas. He wasn’t a fan. I was floored and saw it 3 more times in the cinema. The soundtrack was a gateway album to a different scene, as I only knew of The Cure, Nine Inch Nails, and Stone Temple Pilots before acquiring it.

Helmet, Medicine, Machines of Loving Grace, Rage against the machine, Jane Siberry, Violent Femmes eventually made their way into my collection. But one band in particular was tricky to find. For Love Not Lisa took a long search, and it wasn’t until the summer of ’99 that I found copies of Merge and Information Superdriveway at Vintage Stock in Arkansas. Merge was the better album, as it took a psychedelic route I was fond of. Information Superdriveway was much more straightforward, but still a good time.

I lent both albums to a friend and he lost both. Eventually found them for pennies online and bought again. They were too weird to let them go.

Slip Slide Melting is trippy. It sounds like it was recorded in a state of disarray, leaving its frantic pace for a mesmerising, otherworldly interlude. I revisit it often, remembering that euphoria after watching The Crow, how it blew my expectations and engraved itself as a high watermark in my teen years.

—Sam J. Valdés López