Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magic (Vinyl 2LP 180g)

Three of them moved into a ten-bedroom house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard and made the record that turned them from a cult live band into a phenomenon. Rick Rubin produced it there, tracked over seven weeks in the middle of 1991, and the close-quarters feel is all over the finished thing. Chad Smith wouldn't sleep there and rode home each night, which somehow suits it. Nothing sounds polished into position. Flea's bass leads, Smith's drums land dry and heavy, and John Frusciante plays with a looseness that keeps pulling the songs off centre.

The album swings hard between modes. "Give It Away" and "Suck My Kiss" are pure kinetic funk, delivered at speed. "I Could Have Lied" drops to acoustic guitar and open air, while "Breaking The Girl" starts there and collapses into a junkyard percussion break. And in the middle of side C sits "Under The Bridge", a song about isolation and addiction that Anthony Kiedis reportedly wrote alone and never meant to show the band, closing on a choir featuring Frusciante's mother. Seventeen tracks, ending with a Robert Johnson cover cut outdoors on a hill in the grounds at two in the morning, traffic audible in the background.

Released 24 September 1991, it became the band's commercial breakthrough and one of the defining records of the decade. This is the Warner Bros. reissue, cut at Bernie Grundman Mastering and pressed at Optimal, pressed on 180g vinyl across four sides.