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No wonder most other experimental electronic producers are, to this day, still striving to get within shouting distance of James' genius.įleetwood Mac must have known when they entered the studio in 1978 that they faced an impossible task: creating a follow-up to Rumours, as flawless an album as any band had ever produced. There's intricate, casually virtuosic drum ’n’ bass (“Meltphace 6”), ominous ambient head trips (“Gwety Mernans”), avant-garde treated piano experiments (“Kladfvgbung Micshk”), brutal breakcore freakouts (“54 Cymru Beats”) and everything in between. James AlbumWilson, but it's worth revisiting precisely for how its 30 tracks, unlike those more conceptually holistic albums, cheerfully pull out every trick in James' bag. Drukqs hasn't gotten nearly as much praise over the years as earlier Aphex releases like Selected Ambient Works and Richard D. James wrapped up a remarkable decade-long run with this double album before mostly disappearing from view until 2014, when he finally resurfaced with Syro, his first Aphex Twin album in 13 years. “Intelligent dance music” pioneer Richard D. So let's take a moment to celebrate - and debate, because these lists are always debate starters, not the last word - the greatest achievements in popular music's most ambitious format. (It's also possible, I suppose, that Stadium Arcadium will stand the test of time and one day be revered as a classic. Though some bands - notably Arcade Fire and The Red Hot Chili Peppers - have released double albums in the digital era, the format feels increasingly irrelevant in the age of ones and zeroes, when you can shuffle a band's entire catalog with a few clicks or a single voice command. Five albums here were released after 1995 - but it's telling, I think, that the most recent album comes from 2005, the same year as the arrival of YouTube and the first 80-gig iPod. What's more surprising is how much of the list comes from the CD era, when that longer format supposedly killed off the double album (it's often said, for example, that great ’90s albums such as Exile in Guyville and (What's the Story) Morning Glory? would have been double albums in an earlier time). The double album's heyday was the 1970s, so not surprisingly, half this list comes from that most pretentious of decades for rock and pop music. Perhaps more controversially, I also decided to omit any albums originally released in separate packages that means no Use Your Illusion. That means no Live at the Fillmore East, no Jesus Christ Superstar, no Beatles 1967-1970 and no 69 Love Songs. The below list of double albums is ranked partly by personal preference (because how could it not be?) but also based on conversations with friends and fellow journalists, study of other lists, and some vague, highly subjective accounting of each album's impact and influence on what came after it. Not all double albums are created equal, so I needed to establish some ground rules: no live albums, no compilations, no soundtracks or cast recordings, no triple/quadruple albums. They also proved the depth of our fandom anyone could memorize the track list for Led Zeppelin IV, but if you knew Physical Graffiti by heart, you had earned your right to wear your Zoso T-shirt.
They served as prima facie evidence of a great artist's greatness, proof that their music and message was so expansive that a more conventional format could not contain it.
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But ask them to list albums they're obsessed with, and records that take up two discs will suddenly dominate the conversation (especially if you're asking anyone old enough to remember why some vinyl double albums put sides 1 and 4 on one LP and sides 2 and 3 on the other).īefore we binge-watched TV shows or stayed up all night to play the latest edition of Grand Theft Auto, we binged on double albums. Ask any fan or music critic to compile a list of the greatest albums of all time, and it's likely that most (or all) of the list will be records that could fit onto a single disc.