In the goddamn year of 1999 – the year of The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Virgin Suicides, The Matrix, and Fight Club – the so-called “progressive-aggressive” youth in my hometown had two flavors: rock, for the university steps wednesday crowd, or hip-hop, if you were holding down the square by the opera house. Culture at these gatherings? Usually drowned out by cheap booze and raw, dumb testosterone. Nightlife, the electronic pulse, was just a baby then, barely kicking. But the self-proclaimed aesthetes, the ones hoarding their school lunch money, they were sprinting to the record stores. And there, they found acid jazz. A happy accident, really, probably some pirate’s hustle, but this new aesthetic wormed its way into the city’s DNA like a virus. Still messes with our editorial taste to this day.

Can’t say it was the most important thing, but a rare, long-lost artifact from that era, vanished in countless moves, was the Sisley: Modern Music Conversation CD collection. Bankrolled by Sisley – still fuzzy if it was clothes or makeup – and pushed out by some Italian label, Irma. Six discs that perfectly bottled the fleeting musical spirit of that exact moment.

I had four of them. Long gone now. And this is one of those beautiful, frustrating moments where the internet, the great archive of everything, comes up short. All we could salvage, all we could piece back together, were the tracklists. So, here they are. For you.