In the mid 1960s, a bunch of rock and roll bands discovered free jazz, and their minds were blown. The resulting explosion would lead to psychedelic and progressive rock, as seen in bands like The Byrds, King Crimson, and The Beatles, among others.

In the 90s, a similar movement happened with hardcore and punk bands experiencing similar mind-blowing revelations. Themselves inspired by jazz, Krautrock, and proto-post rock like Talk Talk or Bark Psychosis, they twisted the crashing catharsis of their native genres into what would be known as math rock (which is very different from the twinkly finger tapping that is called math rock today).

The most noted example of this shift is post-hardcore outfit Slint’s 1991 album Spiderland. But that album (or the mixture of influences that created it) was the forerunner of a much larger scene. And after Slint’s dissolution, June of 44 may have been one of the most respectable standard bearers for the movement.

I’ve long had soft spot for this sort of cerebral, angular, dynamic-shifting experimental music. The first record in my collection was Roadside Monument’s Eight Hours Away from Being a Man. Much of my early songwriting career was spent trying to recreate Cool Hand Luke’s I Fought Against Myself. But somehow—as should be expected at this point—June of 44 escaped my attention until just recently.

I made a joke, posting the cover for Eight Hours with the caption “Listens to Spiderland once.” A friend who knows Johnathon Ford replied “it’s maybe more accurate to say that they discovered June of 44 and had their minds freaking blown.”

As is the all-too-common story goes, I rushed to Spotify to catch up on what I had been missing. And within a single listen, Four Great Points proved itself as a truly legendary—if not underappreciated album.

This album is a perfect snapshot of the 1990s music scene where the lines between math rock, post rock, and post hardcore were all a bit blurry. You have tracks that shift from jazzy balladry to explosive riffs (“Of Information & Belief“), unnerving dissonance (“The Dexterity of Luck“), disorienting mosh pits (“Cut Your Face“), beatnik-approved spoken word sections (“Air #17,” which also features a Harmon muted trumpet), and avant garde instrumentals (“Doomsday” and “Lifted Bells,” the latter of which wouldn’t be out of place on an early Tortoise record).

But as diverse as this record is, both in tone and dynamic, it never sounds incongruent. No two tracks sound anything alike, but it feels like the same voice saying different things, whispering, yelling, humming, or mumbling. And as idiosyncratic and alien as this album sounds at times, there’s something comforting in its strangeness. It’s firmly tethered to the earth, but it isn’t afraid to explore the furthest boundaries of its rope.