Lamb is my favorite. :finger:

You have no idea how happy it makes me that you are back and this thread has been revived. I was getting into prog pretty heavily in 2009 and I used to read this forum to get ideas for what to listen to. I believe it was your Gentle Giant thread that made me the superfan of them that I am today.

On the subject of Genesis, I'm a Selling England and Trespass kinda gal, but Foxtrot is a solid choice, it has the best opening (dat mellotron doe) and finale (nothing else to say of course) of any of their albums IMO.

Album 926

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Fishmans - 98.12.28 Otokotachi no Wakare
Year: 1999

December 28th 1998 Fishmans performed together for the last time with Shinji Sato, this was supposed to be the last time with bassist Yuzuru Kashiwabara but due to Sato's untimely death a few months later this became their last true performance. The performance itself lays on the atmosphere really thick and manages to keep it up for the entirety of the performance. While I may not enjoy Fishmans much outside of Long Season the buildup to the final track makes the final payoff so much more satisfying. As would be expected of the last show for a farewell tour they play through their most highly regarded work, ending with the utterly brilliant Long Season. If they hadn't played this album/song in it's entirety this would never have made this list, but the live and final version of Long Season is so, utterly breathtaking in the context of the whole performance. Context may be important but it certainly speaks for itself to me.

1 Choice Track: Long Season is over 41 minutes of pure ecstasy.

I must have been sick the week that the pretentious prog heads met and decided to pretend that we love Lamb, The Wall and Emerson Lake and Palmer. I was there when we all promised to learn Zeuhl but we never followed through on that so why are we still pretending here?


On a more serious note, I really appreciate all the positive feedback, and really hope everyone gives these works at least one listen. For a bit of inside baseball, I have about 250 albums in a document ready for me to put down and give my reasoning, but I try to only use this list for every third or fourth entry (for obvious reasons) and supplement the rest with research and basically albums that pique my interest and that I find engaging on the first listen (or re-listen), and also hold up on follow up listens. These albums can either be teling a great story, be a great entry point to the rest of a bands discography, or just be awesome albums that you must listen to. Given the limitation of one album per band and no repeats from the original 1001 these are the criteria (in non-weighted order) I consider when wanting to add something by an artist I feel should be included:

1. Accessibility - how easy it is to get into this album compared to the rest of the artist work, ie how much will the people reading this actually enjoy what I am suggesting
2. Artistry - how good is the album
3. Personal preference - which album is my favourite
4. Story - How good is the story and history behind the album

Usually I'm selfish and just use my personal preference as a tie breaker, I mean it is my list after all.

I also originally considered having albums 699-600 being exclusively metal but i think the constant bounce between genres makes this more interesting.

Also please listen to have moicy! it is so awesome. https://open.spotify.com/album/3r512B1IHua0oDxxN3ndcd

Album 925

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Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind
Year: 1996

The musical equivalent of inviting your sleep paralysis demon over and telling it to bring all its friends to truly go wild for over 2 hours. Few non-metal bands truly manage to be heavy as ****, much like Comus' First Utterance, Soundtracks for the Blind achieves a cloying, unyielding and uncomfortable heaviness that most extreme metal bands could only dream of. Listen to this album, if only for the sheer relief you will feel when it's over. Listen to it again when the demon demands it.

3 Choice Tracks: I am unable to maintain enough mental coherence when listening to this to pick out individual tracks.

Album 924

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Magma - Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ Kömmandöh
Year: 1973

Magma is one of the bands I always regret not listening to enough, and my biggest failing is that when I come back to them I almost always just pop on MDK and leave it at that, telling myself that next time I'll go through every album again. There is something truly magical about MDK, I would say it is the perfect litmus test to see whether Magma and probably Zeuhl as a whole is for you. Featuring a fictional language in such a prominent way is just the correct level of hilarious and pretentious. One of the very few redeeming things about Fr*nce.

3 Choice Tracks: Hortz Fur Dëhn Štekëhn Ẁešt, Kobaïa Iss Dëh Hündïn, Mëkanïk Kömmandöh

Magma are from the planet Kobaïa, not Fr*nce, what are you talking about?

Forgive my momentary lapse of sanity. It has also occured to me that I have a few more albums by artists that actually are from Fr*nce in the pipeline so maybe this statement was premature. Also I have noticed that it's mostly been pretty mainstream stuff, maybe I should dig out something actually obscure soon.

Why is France censored?

Maybe it has something to do with kissing.