Zane Lowe is an unbearably smug son of a turd and if you disagree with that statement then you’ll probably disagree with most of this article. Ever since the days when he was sitting on a badly green-screened couch, chumming up to the Foo Fighters, Lowe has maintained the air of a man whose every musical opinion is based not on a love of music, but on a love of his own opinions on music.

The Smug-Meister-General of BBC Radio 1′s musical output has a long-running tradition of forcing his opinions down the throats of his listeners by choosing a series of “Masterpiece” albums to play, in their entirety, during his show. Thankfully this only happens once a year.

However, things are different this time.

If Zane Lowe thinks that he can force his idea of what makes a musical classic down our throats then we’re going to do the same thing to our readers, hopefully making you realise that this kind of behaviour isn’t okay. We might strap you all down and force the sounds of The Sugababes’ classic “Hole In The Head” into you, or we might just leave a link and some impassioned words from our writers.

We’ll see how we feel.

For those of you who still care about what the people who employ Chris Moyles think, the Radio 1 press person wrote these words to accompany the email:

Each show will include interviews with the artists and others involved in the making of the album, giving a fascinating insight into the stories behind the songs. Zane also takes a look at how each album since its release has influenced other artists with contributors including Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Blink 182 and Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner.

Chris Martin?! BLINK 182?! ALEX TURNER?! Why, Radio 1, with these leviathans of popular music, you are truly spoiling us but what does the Git-In-Chief have to say about his little collection?

“It gets harder every year to pick them, but this year’s four albums each hold a special place in the record collections of many, whilst at the at the same time influencing on many of today’s most successful and brilliant artists.”

It gets harder because you’re trying so hard to look like you know music Zane. The identity of the albums that Lowe has chosen (by committee) isn’t a secret but we genuinely couldn’t care less what they are so you’ll have to look elsewhere for them. Sorry chumps.

Anyway, taking a leaf out of Lowe’s Big Book of Self-Importance, we’ve come up with a list of our ‘masterpiece’ albums. No committee, no real thought. Everybody in the hecklerspray bedsit got the chance to pick one. It’s only fair.

Dare – The Human League

Mof Gimmers: Synthpop was always a ludicrous (gloriously so) genre, which showcased a retrofuturism hatched up in bedsits and motorway cafes by young men with dreadful haircuts and worse clothes. Then, Phil Oakey & Co. realised that they were sitting on something that was plain futuristic and went about making one of the finest, weirdest pop albums ever made. While ‘Don’t You Want Me’ is standard wedding fodder, it’s still a bona fide masterpiece. Backed by the catchier-than-mumps ‘Love Action’, the fierce ‘Sound Of The Crowd’ and the thunderous ‘Do Or Die’, ‘Dare’ is just about the most perfect pop-art LP ever made.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Check Your Head – Beastie Boys

Si Sharp: ‘Paul’s Boutique’ may have seen them at their lyrical peak, but 1992′s Check Your Head is the grooviest hip-hop album of all time.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Lungs – Florence & The Machine

Joanna Bolouri: Original, beautiful, quirky and downright genius. An album that could bring back longing and joy to an otherwise dead heart.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Beat Me – Electric Eel Shock

Kris Silver: An album that perfectly sums up this band of Japanese outsiders, fusing pop, punk, metal and comedy to make a collection of riotous, yet still catchy, and often funny songs about everything from politics to fishing.

Listen to it on Spotify.

We Are The Pipettes – The Pipettes

Robin Darke: Failing to invigorate the market with a reinvention of the traditional 60s girl group, this album breathes a modern interpretation into a staple of Motown history; catchy, feminism-infused and highly underrated. Get them before they turn eurodance and shi…oh.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Mr Beast – Mogwai

Michael Park: Mogwai have been producing exceptional album after exceptional album right back to 1997′s ‘Young Team’ but this attempt from 2006 is one of their most accessible. Rolling crescendoes and haunting lulls, what’s not to like?

Listen to it on Spotify.

Actually – The Pet Shop Boys

Sophie Hall: It’s the one with ‘What Have I Done to Deserve This?’ on it – a song which would upgrade ‘Disappointing second Hear’say Album’ to ‘Best contribution to sound in the universe’ in a mere moment.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Hootenanny – The Replacements

Lauren Mullineaux: It might not be their finest album, but it captures a band on the brink of unappreciated greatness and showed the self-deprecating maturity of Westerberg’s lyrics.  Besides the man is a genius.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Second Toughest In The Infants – Underworld

Matthew Laidlow: Comprising multiple styles from lounge to drum & bass, progressive electro to full-on acid, Second Toughest In The Infants is an album that sounds as fresh today as when it first came out, especially when coupled with the rambling, confusing lyrics of Karl Hyde.

Listen to it on Spotify.

Get them all on one, big Spotify playlist so that you can impress people at parties.

So there you have it, readers. Nine classic albums from the furthest reaches of musical taste (and decency), all delivered to you without the need for a three hour retrospective starring Chris Martin and Alex Turner.

You might not like all of the albums on our list but do feel free to tell us your ‘masterpiece’ albums in the comments. Or slag off Zane Lowe. It’s really up to you.

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Whenever an album from a band you’ve never heard of plops on to your desk, it always makes the first listen that extra bit special. Will it be raging punk, diced up electro or something totally different?

Sometimes it’s that little bit harder to listen to a band when you already have high expectations of them following their previous releases. If anything Radiohead suffered from this when they released Ok Computer – for an album like that to be hailed as one of the best of the nineties, it was always going to be hard for them to match it with the wobbled electronic sound on Kid A.

But you can sometimes deduce elements of a band’s personality before even listening to their CD. Scanning the track titles, it’s clear Trinitron Meets the Mars People want to have fun and aren’t exactly naming that many songs after real life, heartfelt events. The Fawn Took My Shoes, and Now I Need Blues Clues and Bear Grylls Ate My Fuckin’ Turtle made us spit tea across our keyboards when we read them, for example.

But before assuming they were some sort of novelty comedy act with wacky names, it was best to let the music do the talking.

Hailing from the sunny shores of California, this six-piece offers a slab of mostly instrumental music that doesn’t nail itself down to any particular genre. Throughout the 48 minute album, we are offered all sorts of sounds that constantly spit and do battle with each other as every separate hook, drum kick and cymbal crash aims to come out on top.

Is it a hectic and busy sounding record? Yes. But unlike conventional music, it means there is more going on, giving the music more in the way of longevity and letting you pick up new aspects, even on repeated listens. There’s none of this three minute single guitar riff before a note on a keyboard is brought in stuff going on.

Sounding somewhere between the beauty of Mogwai and the determination of 65daysofstatic, with the psychedelic & trippy old heroin-sounding Flaming Lips floating around somewhere in the background, the album definitely makes for interesting listening.

The major problem for an album that is mostly non-lyrical is how to keep it interesting, with a lot of instrumental music failing to develop any sort of flowing structure. Instead, we are normally subjected to a half-baked idea that may have sounded good in rehearsal failing to transfer to an album.

Hey Stop Stealing Monkeys is the album’s longest track, clocking in at just under eight minutes. Slightly fearful that the song was going to be a few ideas looped around, it was a relief to hear a lot of sounds chucked in to a massive musical pan, shook up and let loose. From build ups to breakdowns, the song keeps on going off on different paths and steers clear of being dull and repetitive.

Spacey, trippy sounds echo around the speakers when The Hungry Mouse Caught His Tail On The Pantry Door comes out to play. Its warped retro eight bit sound is somewhere between being stuck in a videogame full of singing lollypop trees whilst being trapped by some satanic demon in the underbelly of hell itself.

To date only one song from the band has featured any singing - Ah Haaha Ha Goes The Hilarious Hyena features vocals from keyboardist/keys man Anthony. His particular vocal style matches the up tempo frenzied pace of the music. While it does sometimes feel bedded underneath the song, it at least demonstrates that the group can successfully add further elements to their already winning formula of instrumental music.

One more reason why we like this album is due to the zero mentions of the band coming from bloody California. If it isn’t the Red Hot Chili Peppers slipping in a mention every other song to boost up tourist numbers, it’s some sort of rapper based on the west coast of America spitting rhymes about South Central and all that crap. We know that people are proud to represent where they come from, but sometimes it’s better to keep the mentions to a minimum. And let’s not mention that bloody song off The OC.

It’s also time for hecklerspray’s insertion of a crap pun: the band are from a brilliantly named place called Walnut, because of this we can sum up the album as cracking.

You know, because you crack open walnuts… oh never mind. Go buy the album.

The debut release from Trinitron Meets The Mars People is out now. For song samplers and ordering information visit TMTMP on Myspace

Hooray! Mogwai are back and they've brought their unique style of uplifting guitar music back with them.

The post rock outfit are one of the best in the genre, after Godspeed You! Black Emperor pretty much created the genre and Explosions In The Sky and Sigur Ros brought it to the masses.  

People sometimes call Mogwai moody and depressing, but anyone who presses up a line of t-shirts saying 'Blur: are shite' are winners in our eyes. This free track, The Sun Smells Too Loud is taken from their new album The Hawk Is Howling and won’t hit the shelves until September 22. So use this song as a sampler for an album which will more than likely be another success.  

Download The Sun Smells Too Loud here