Arjen Lucassen has released some images of the forthcoming Ayreon album, The Theory of Everything. Enticing!
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1990: A Little Psychedelia Is Good for the Soul
1990 has always been a special year for me. Communism was on its last legs, the economy boomed, and the world seemed a rather friendly place. There were never lines at airports, and I could see a John Hughes movie about any time I so desired.
I also graduated from college in May, 1990, and I spent the next three months living with my great friend, Ron Strayer, in Lawrence, Kansas, sleeping on his couch.
In late August, I packed up my Mac Classic, some of my books, and my outdoor gear, and I moved out West to the Rockies. Once there, I began editing an academic journal with fellow progarchist Craig Breaden, and we became fast friends.
For two years, I wrote, edited, hiked, listened to music, and played lots of Canasta. My older brother lived in Boise, and we met at least once a month for a hike and some excellent fellowship. Usually, we talked about the natural order of things and our mutual love of science fiction.
1990 also introduced me to more music–and, perhaps more importantly, more types of music–than any year I can remember. I had been a rather straight-forward prog rock and New Wave/alternative rock kind of guy for most of my life. Ron and Craig,however, each introduced me to a rather wondrous variety new groups and genres.
Of the new material released some time during 1990, here are some my favorite songs and albums, in no particular order.
House of Love–“Hannah” and “Shine On.”
Cure–“Never Enough”
World Party, Good-bye Jumbo
Peter Murphy–“Cuts You Up”
Stone Roses, The Stone Roses
Charlatans, Some Friendly
The Sundays, Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic
Echo and the Bunnymen, Reverberation [and, yes, I think this is fine Echo album, even without Ian]
French Frith Kaiser Thompson, Invisible Means
Big Big Train–Justice!
I’m so proud of these guys. For the full article, click here.
The host of The Prog Magazine Radio Show on TeamRock Radio, Philip Wilding presented the Breakthrough award and he highlighted exactly why that honour has been bestowed on him with an hilarious intro based on schoolboy rivalry between Gavin Esler and Jeremy Paxman. The award was won by Big Big Train who were clearly very pleased with their achievement as three members of the band – Greg Spawton, David Longdon and Andy Poole – paused to thank everyone who had helped them. It’s important to remember who’s helped you get to where you are, of course!–Jerry Ewing
One Hundred, or Thereabout…
A list of favorites?
Ignoring blues, bluegrass, and alt.country (though some of my picks will leak in that direction). My favorite albums in a roughly prog or prog-friendly orbit. Explanatory notes as needed. And no Beatles.
Aereogramme — Sleep and Release. Scottish prog metal with screaming blue Pict faces.
Alan Parsons Project — I Robot
Alice in Chains — Jar of Flies
The Allman Brothers Band. Berry Oakley, arms outstretched in the niche.
Anthony Phillips — The Geese and the Ghost
Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk. Where would rock be without these?
Atomic Opera — For Madmen Only
Be Bop Deluxe — Life in the Air Age. The curious case of the three-sided album.
Black Eyed Sceva — Way Before the Flood. Intelligent, proggy Christian emo/ math rock.
Black Eyed Sceva — 5 Years, 50,000 Miles Davis. “Beware when you read ‘Letters from the Earth…'”
Boards of Canada — Tomorrow’s Harvest. To have been in the desert Southwest for the live listening party.
Buffalo Springfield Again. Long version of “Bluebird,” please.
The Byrds — Fifth Dimension
The Choir — Free Flying Soul. Another smart, Christian masterpiece.
Crack the Sky — Safety in Numbers. “Something’s wrong from the moon, my friends…”
Daryl Hall — Sacred Songs
Dead Confederate — Sugar. DC is a Southern neo-grunge band. But if Dmitri Shostakovich had ever tried his hand at writing a four minute rock bombast, the title tack to this album is close to what it would have sounded like.
The Decemberists — The Hazards of Love. Hipsters closer to prog than they realize.
Deftones — Saturday Night Wrist
Dixie Dregs — What If
Dixie Dregs — Night of the Living Dregs
Dixie Dregs — Dregs of the Earth (the trifecta)
Dogs of Peace — Speak. A brilliant one-off by Jimmie Lee Sloas and Gordon Kennedy. May we have another, please?
Echolyn — As the World.
Electric Light Orchestra — Eldorado
Emerson, Lake & Palmer — Pictures at an Exhibition. The Lyceum Theatre rendering (1970, DVD) is better, in my opinion.
Emerson, Lake & Palmer — Trilogy
Brian Eno — Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. Gorgeous music for the documentary, For All Mankind.
Explosions in the Sky — The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place
Faith No More — The Real Thing
Flaming Lips — Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Fleet Foxes. Okay, I’m starting to veer…
Genesis — Trespass. My favorite in their storied collection, leaving us wondering what might have been had Ant remained in the band.
Genesis — Foxtrot. The end of the age, in 9/8 time.
Gov’t Mule — Life Before Insanity
Hall & Oates — Abandoned Luncheonette. Blue-eyed soul was never this artsy.
Hall & Oates — War Babies. Todd Rundgren was never this blue-eyed soul.
Helmet — Meantime
Incubus — Morning View
Jane’s Addiction — Ritual de lo Habitual
Jeff Buckley — Mystery White Boy
Jennanykind — Mythic. The scary South, a la O’Connor.
Jethro Tull — This Was
Jethro Tull — Thick as a Brick
Jimi Hendrix Experience — Are You Experienced?
John Fahey — America. Prog folk if there ever was.
Johnny Q. Public — Extra Ordinary
Juliana Hatfield — Only Everything
Kansas. When they were lean and hungry for barbecue and potato salad.
Kansas — Masque. “The Pinnacle” was their pinnacle.
King Crimson — Larks Tongue in Aspic
King Crimson — Red
King’s X — Gretchen Goes to Nebraska
King’s X — Dogman. One of the most played records in my collection.
Kraftwerk — Autobahn. Analog over digital any day of the week.
Led Zeppelin — II
Led Zeppelin — Houses of the Holy
Living Colour — Vivid
Model Engine — The Lean Years’ Tradition (BES re-incarnated)
The Moles — Instinct. “Raymond, have you seen the Red Queen?”
The Monkees — HEAD. Never apologize for loving the Pre-Fab Four.
The Moody Blues — On the Threshold of a Dream. Sending out “In the Beginning” to the NSA.
My Bloody Valentine — Loveless
My Morning Jacket — At Dawn
My Morning Jacket — It Still Moves
Neil Young — Harvest
Neil Young — Tonight’s the Night
Ortodoksinen Kamarikuroro — Divine Liturgy. From Finland, the most breath-taking Orthodox Church chant I’ve ever heard.
Pelican — City of Echoes
PFM — Jet Lag
The Pink Floyd — The Piper at The Gates of Dawn
Pink Floyd — Wish You Were Here
The Police — Zenyatta Mondatta
The Police — Synchronicity
Proto-Kaw — Early Recordings from Kansas (1971-73). Therefore, proto-Kansas.
Radiohead — The Bends
Radiohead — Kid A. Leading rats and children out of town.
Rick Wakeman — The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable
Rush — A Farewell to Kings
Rush — Permanent Waves
Rush — Moving Pictures (the hat-trick)
Sebastian Hardie — Four Moments. Prog from down under.
Slowdive — Blue Day (compilation)
Soundgarden — SuperUnknown
Steve Hackett — Voyage of the Acolyte
Sun Kil Moon — Ghosts of the Great Highway
Supertramp — Crime of the Century. You’re bloody well right.
Syd Barrett — The Madcap Laughs
Synergy — Semi-Conductor. Compilation of Larry Fast’s electronic realizations.
Talk Talk — Spirit of Eden
This Will Destroy You. Post-rock paradise set by the mighty Rio Grande.
Todd Rundgren — A Wizard, A True Star. Without Hall & Oates.
Tomita — The Planets. Electronic realization of Holst’s orchestral suite.
Tool — Ænima
Velour 100 — Fall Sounds. Shoe-gazing density from Ypsilanti.
Velour 100 — Songs From the Rainwater.
Wilco — Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Mossad makes a cameo.
Yes — The Yes Album
Yes — Tales From Topographic Oceans. Yes, it’s too long, but “The Revealing Science of God” is worth the whole album.
Thaddeus J. Kozinski’s Favorite Albums
Seeing a name like Thaddeus J. Kozinski–who wouldn’t check out this post!?!? A great note from this professor of philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College. Tad, I hope you don’t mind me posting it. It’s too good not to.
***
Brad:
If you’re interested, here’s a list of mine:
The masters of this genre–post metal and doom-metal and post-rock, which you will find below, are existentialist, beautiful, brutal, soul-crushing-and-soul-elevating, poetic, suckers of reality to the bone. To me, they’re Plato, and Dostoyevsky and Flannery O’Connor and Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, and Marshall McLuhan and David Hart and Catherine Pickstock and Alasdair MacIntyre and Simone Weil, and E. Michael Jones and Rene Girard and Max Picard and Charles Taylor put to music. This is Arvo Part and Olafur Arnalds and Beethoven and Russian chant, and David Lynch and Michael O’Brien and Louis de Montfort (punching out the drunks interrupting his sermon) and John of the Cross and Socrates and the militant masculinity of St. Michael and the depthless femininity of St. Raphael transmogrified into earth, electricity, mountains, tsunamis, blood, sweat, anger, and the depths of the ocean. It’s not tame–no, it’s completely wild and ferocious–but it’s good.
Mouth of the Architect: The Ties that Bind, Sleepwalk Powder (on Split with Kenoma)
Neurosis: Times of Grace, Given to the Rising, Through Silver in Blood, Sun that Never Sets, The Eye of Every Storm
Isis: Oceanic, Panopticon
Tides: Resurface
Giant: Song
Tides/Giant: Split
Amenra: Mass IV
Tool: Undertow, Aenima
Soundgarden: Badmotorfinger
Minsk: Echoes in the Movement of Stone, Ritual Fires of Abandonment
Yob: Atma, The Great Cessation, The Unreal Never Lived, The Illusion of Motion
Blckwvs: 130,140, 150
Latitudes: Individuation
Failure: Magnified, Fantastic Planet
Indukti: Idmen
Jesu: Conquerer
Meshuggah: Catch 33, Obzen
Mono: Hymn the Immortal Wind, You are There, One More Step and you Die
Pelican: The Fire in our Throats will Beckon the Thaw
Rosetta: A Determinism of Morality
Samothrace: Reverence to Stone
Shora: Malval
Braveyoung: We are Lonely Animals
Mogwai: Young Team (Mogwai Fear Satan)
Russian Circles: Station, Geneva, Empros
Yet Another Top Albums List
Brad’s post below on his Top 101 albums of the rock era got me thinking about my favorite albums of the same era. And given his hopes that we all do a similar post, I’m only too happy to oblige now given a few free hours and an overwhelming urge to write something (that’s not job related, which I get enough of Monday-Friday and often times on weekends).
I’ve discussed elsewhere that coming up with a list of five or ten desert island discs would be nearly impossible for me. If I was a secret agent under interrogation, a knowledgeable interrogator could easily get actionable intelligence from me by simply trying to force me to come up with such a list. Thus, I’m not going to restrict this list to any particular number of albums.
On the other hand, I am going to put one restriction on this list – I’m not going to list anything I’ve first heard in 2013. For me, it takes time to fully digest great works of art, and thus all of these albums here will be ones that have stood the test of time for me. This will eliminate some great albums from the list, such as English Electric 2 by Big Big Train, Riverside’s spectacular Shrine of New Generation Slaves, and other great releases from a year that is shaping up to be one of incredible abundance for excellent prog rock. It will also eliminate albums such as Spirt of Eden by Talk Talk and Tick Tock by Gazpacho, neither of which I had actually heard until a few months ago. Nevertheless, all of the releases mentioned in this paragraph are extremely likely to end up on a future edition of this list.
Finally, here and there, I will add a few notes about some of the albums on the list. Maybe to give some insight as to why I like them, maybe an interesting fact about them … who knows. The reasons will hopefully be self-evident.
Genre-wise, the list will cover a lot more than just prog, but generally will stay within the realm of rock. This will eliminate some other favorite albums, such as two excellent releases of instrumental flamenco guitar by the late Italian guitarist Gino D’ Auri. It will also eliminate some classical guitar oriented albums by Steve Hackett that I otherwise like very much.
Anwyay, without further adieu, my list:
AC/DC – Back in Black
Aerosmith – Toys in the Attic
Aerosmith – Rocks
Aerosmith – Rock in a Hard Place (this is a *very* underrated album among Aerosmith fans, in my opinion, probably since it was the only one without Joe Perry. But Jimmy Crespo did a bang-up job in his role, and this album flat out rocks. As an Amazon reviewer noted, it’s “criminally underrated.”)
Arena – The Visitor
The Beatles – Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Big Big Train – English Electric, Part 1
Big Big Train – The Underfall Yard
Black Sabbath – Paranoid
Black Sabbath – Sabotage
Black Sabbath – The Mob Rules
The Cult – Electric
The Cult – Sonic Temple
Days of the New I (sometimes referred to as ‘Yellow’)
Days of the New II (sometimes referred to as ‘Green’. This album came out in autumn, 1999, around the time I was going through a divorce from my first wife. As you can imagine, I was a whirlwind of emotions. This album both resonated with me and grounded me during that time. It’s also spectacularly good).
Drive By Truckers – Southern Rock Opera
Drive By Trucker – The Dirty South (If you’ve ever lived south of the Mason-Dixon line for any extended length of time and like raw, gritty music, then these two albums are for you).
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer – Trilogy
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer – Brain Salad Surgery
Fleetwood Mac – Rumours (one of the best pop albums ever. It showed that ‘pop’ and ‘quality’ need not be mutually exclusive. I swear my opinion here is in no way swayed by the fact that Stevie Nicks was a strong celebrity crush of mine in the late ’70’s … no, really … ok, maybe a little)
The Flower Kings – Space Revolver
Gazpacho – Night
Genesis – Selling England by the Pound
Genesis – A Trick of the Tail
Genesis – Wind and Wuthering
Glass Hammer – Perilous
Grateful Dead, Charlotte, 3-23-1995 (This isn’t officially an album, but rather a bootleg recording of the only Grateful Dead show I ever attended. While I was nothing close to being a Deadhead, it was a great show, and I can certainly understand why The Dead had so many dedicated fans. One additional note – Bruce Hornsby sat in on piano that night).
Heart – Little Queen
Iron Maiden – Piece of Mind
Iron Maiden – Powerslave
Jane’s Addiction – Ritual de lo Habitual
Jefferson Airplane – The Worst of Jefferson Airplane (yes, a greatest hits album, but what a great collection of songs here).
Jethro Tull – Thick as a Brick
Jethro Tull – Warchild
Jethro Tull – Minstrel in the Gallery
Jethro Tull – Songs from the Wood
John Cougar Mellencamp – Scarecrow
Jon and Vangelis – Short Stories
Jon Anderson – Olias of Sunhillow
Jon Anderson – Song of Seven
Jon Anderson – Change We Must
Judas Priest – British Steel
Kansas – Leftoverture
Kansas – Point of Know Return
Kerry Livegren – Seeds of Change
King Crimson – In The Court of the Crimson King
Led Zeppelin – III
Led Zeppelin – IV
Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy
Led Zeppelin – Physical Graffiti
Led Zeppelin – Presence (It would seem strange to call a band as lauded as Led Zeppelin ‘underrated’, but I think the label applies. They did music that falls into so many different genres, from bluesy music such as ‘When The Levee Breaks’, to prog-tinted stuff such as ‘Stairway to Heaven’, ‘Kashmir’ and ‘In The Light’, to folky stuff such as ‘The Battle of Evermore’ and ‘Gallows Pole’ to flat out rockers such as ‘Rock and Roll’ and ‘Out on the Tiles’ … and they did them all extremely well).
Lone Justice – their self-titled debut. (Their cowpunk sound was a little bit ahead of it’s time, and if they had debuted in the mid-90’s or later when the alt-country wave hit, they might still be around. Also, it’s entirely possible my opinion here is swayed a bit again by the celebrity crush thing, the object of which being lead singer Maria McKee)
Marillion – Script for a Jester’s Tear
Marillion – Clutching at Straws
Marillion – Brave (this was an album that didn’t click with me on the first few listens, and I set it aside. Years later I picked it up again, gave it a good listen, and was blown away, wondering how I missed it the first time around. A true masterpiece).
Montrose – their self-titled debut.
The Moody Blues – Days of Future Passed
Mother Love Bone – a self-titled album. (One really wonders how music history would have been different if the lead singer of this Seattle-based band, the flamboyant Andrew Wood, hadn’t succumbed to his demons and died of a heroin overdose on the verge of releasing their debut album in 1990. There almost certainly would have been no Pearl Jam, and I wonder if the grunge thing would have ever taken off, given that Mother Love Bone’s sound was nothing like that of the other bands of the same time and place).
Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Live Rust
Neil Young and Crazy Horse – Weld (both live albums, and thus compilations, but both are very good. In fact, I think most of the songs on these albums sound better live than in the studio).
Paul Simon – Graceland
Pearl Jam – Vitalogy
Pete Townshend – Empty Glass
Pete Townshend – White City (a ridiculously underrated album)
Pink Floyd – Meddle
Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon
Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here
The Police – Syncrhonicity
Porcupine Tree – Fear of a Blank Planet
Queen – News of the World
R.E.M. – Life’s Rich Pageant
Renaissance – Novella
Renaissance – Turn of the Cards
Riverside – Rapid Eye Movement (I thought of this album as pretty good when I first listened. I’ve re-assessed lately, and now realize it’s great, the best of the ‘Reality Dream’ trilogy in my opinion).
Riverside – Anno Domini High Definition
The Rolling Stones – Some Girls
Rush – 2112
Rush – A Farewell to Kings
Rush – Hemispheres
Rush – Permanent Waves
Rush – Moving Pictures
Rush – Grace Under Pressure
Rush – Power Windows
Rush – Clockwork Angels
Rush – Exit Stage Left (a great live album)
Saga – World’s Apart
Simple Minds – Once Upon A Time (Another album that proved ‘pop’ and ‘quality’ need not be mutually exclusive. This album had some exceptionally strong melodies).
Soundgarden – Badmotorfinger
Steve Hackett – Voyage of the Acolyte
Steve Hackett – Spectral Mornings
Tool – Lateralus
Tool – 10,000 Days
Trevor Rabin – Can’t Look Away
U2 – War
Van Halen – Fair Warning (another very underrated album)
Wang Chung – To Live and Die in LA Soundtrack
The Who – Tommy
The Who – Who’s Next
The Who – Quadrophenia
The Who – Who Are You
Yes – The Yes Album
Yes – Fragile
Yes – Close to the Edge
Yes – Going for the One
Yes – Drama
A Progressive Rocker from Wisconsin: Cailyn Lloyd
We invited one of our favorite artists, Cailyn Lloyd, to tell us about what’s going on in her rather busy life. Dedicated to her family and her home life, she’s also quite dedicated to her art. And, excellent it is. Her first album, FOUR PIECES, was one of the best albums of 2012, and she demonstrated to the rock world how to approach classical music (and a bit of Texas-style blues guitar) with taste and nothing but taste.
Thank you, Cailyn, for taking the time to let us know what’s going on.
Voyager:
I am in the studio, working on a new project called Voyager. This project arose from my interest in the Planets Suite by Gustav Holst. Problem was, the music as it stood did not easily lend itself to a rock interpretation and the opening movement, Mars, had already been explored extensively by better artists than I. The idea gradually evolved from there to a musical interpretation of the Voyager Space Project.
Voyager will include excerpts from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune from the Planets Suite as well as ten original pieces of music: Voyager (the opening track), Io, Europa, Titan, Enceladus, Miranda, Ariel, Triton, Pale Blue Dot, and Heliopause. I have completed sketches for all of the tracks and I am now working on the instrumentation and programming.
While I originally imagined this as a progressive rock suite, it will be more eclectic, not adhering to any single genre. Much of it is classically inflected symphonic prog, particularly the Planet Suite excerpts as well as Io, Titan, and Triton. Europa and Pale Blue Dot are more New Age with blues inflections. Enceladus is free form without time or key signature.
Voyager will primarily be an instrumental work though I do imagine some wordless vocals on a few tracks using a vocalist rather than samples. Most of the drumming will be recorded on an acoustic set. The bass guitar and keyboards will be more prominent, especially the keys as much of the original music is being written at the keyboard.
Currently planning for a release date in mid-2014. When I’m not working on Voyager, I have been listening to Steven Wilson (The Raven that Refused to Sing), District 97 (Trouble with Machines), Erik Satie (various piano works), Respighi (Church Windows and others), and Sarah McLachlan (one of my guilty pleasures). More soon….
To visit Cailyn’s personal website, click here. Again, a huge thanks to Cailyn. We eagerly await VOYAGER.
Some Editorial Thoughts–Late August 2013
There several things I (Brad-ed.) want and have wanted to accomplish with Progarchy.
First and foremost, I wanted to form (and have certainly achieved) a cadre of great writers. It’s my opinion that any reviewer (of any form of art) should be as good in her or his craft as those being reviewed. Who wants to read a poor writer when reading about works of beauty, goodness, and truth? The disconnect is too great. Frankly, I think we Progarchists have accomplished this; we’ve been successful, and we’re not even quite a year old. And, at the risk of sounding arrogant, I think the writers of Progarchy can match any writers anywhere on the internet in terms of depth, craft, wisdom, and empathy.
Not a single writer of Progarchy wants to put a thing of nastiness next to a work of greatness. It’s not in the nature of any one of us. Not to be Nietzschean, but we want excellence to match excellence. Really, why do a thing without excellence–whether it’s cleaning the kitchen floor or writing a novel? Why waste the time. Mediocrity hovers like a cancer over much of history and the world (I blame big governments and big corporations for this, but I’m merely express an opinion). But, if we look at the culture and civilization that gave us progressive rock, we see a society of amazing persons, whether we agree with every aspect of those persons or not: Socrates, Cicero, Hillel, St. John, or King Alfred. Not a single one of these persons is mediocre.
Second, we want to connect reviewer to artist and reviewer and artist to listener. If we (and by we, I mean me–Brad) err, it’s probably on the side of being Fanboyish/Fangirlish at times. But, again, I think as reviewers we should be fine with this. While I greatly admire, for example, biographers who can explain the evil of a Josef Stalin or an Adolf Hitler, in my own work, I want to look at J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, persons I admire and consider heroes. I’m not interested in hiding their flaws, but I am intensely interested in finding their greatnesses. Even in this world of egalitarianism, I want heroes. Nothing excellent is based in equality. It can’t be. If it were average, it wouldn’t be excellent. All excellences are particular and individual.
Additionally, I don’t want to spend my time analyzing someone through the lens of hatred, no matter how necessary it is for us as a civilization and as–simply–humanity to deconstruct and analyze such horrors in our society. So, while I’m glad there are folks dedicating their lives to studying the writings and actions of a Hitler, I want to think deeply about people I love and admire.
Give me, for example, a Greg Spawton or David Longdon over a Justin Bieber (in full disclosure, I’ve never heard a song by Bieber). Give me a Matt Stevens, not a Madonna (yes, I’ve heard Madonna songs). Give me a Matt Cohen, not a Lady Gaga (ok, don’t know her either). Give me a Giancarlo Erra and Nosound, not a corporatized boy band. Give me a Jerry Ewing, not an (don’t even know the name) editor of People! Give me a Neil Peart or a Mark Hollis, not a Nicholas Sparks. Give me a Brian Watson not a Thomas Kinkade. Well, you get the point.
In the spirit of this editorial, let me state that I’m very, very happy to inaugurate a new irregular feature at Progarchy–a discussion with the artists themselves about what is happening right now in their lives. How they’re responding to their older works; what they think about art and beauty; and what they want for their futures. Our first such feature comes from a beloved artist at Progarchy, Cailyn Lloyd. And, so it begins. . . .
My (Brad’s) Top 101 Albums of the Rock Era
On Facebook, Chris McGarel posted his favorite albums of all time. It’s an excellent list. I’d like to do the same, and I’m hoping all of the Progarchists will as well at some point. But, I’m not quite ready to be so definitive yet. So, instead of a “best of,” I offer a list of 101 favorites, subject to change over time. Two weeks before turning 46. . . with a bit of humility and more than a bit of awe, I offer the following 100 in (according to group name) alphabetic order.
ABC, Lexicon of Love
Advent, Cantus Firmus
Arjen A. Lucasen, Lost in the New Real
Ayreon, Human Equation
Ayreon, Timeline
Beatles, Magical Mystery Tour
Big Big Train, English Electric (vols 1 and 2)
Big Big Train, The Difference Machine
Big Big Train, Far Skies, Deep Time
Big Big Train, Underfall Yard
Big Country, Steeltown
Blancmange, Happy Families
Bryan Ferry, Boys and Girls
Catherine Wheel, Chrome
Chris Squire, Fish Out of Water
Cocteau Twins, Heaven or Las Vegas
Cosmograf, When Age Has Done Its Duty
Cosmograf, The Man Left in Space
Echo and the Bunnymen, Heaven Up Here
Echo and the Bunnymen, Porcupine
Flower Kings, Paradox Hotel
Flower Kings, Space Revolver
Gazpacho, Night
Gazpacho, Tick Tock
Genesis, A Trick of the Tail
Genesis, Seconds Out
Genesis, Selling England by the Pound
Glass Hammer, Lex Rex
Glass Hammer, Perilous
IZZ, Darkened Room
Jethro Tull, Songs from the Wood
Kate Bush, The Hounds of Love
Kevin McCormick, Squall
Kevin McCormick, With the Coming of Evening
Kingbathmat, Overcoming the Monster
Love Spit Love (self titled)
Kansas, Leftoverture
Marillion, Brave
Marillion, Marbles
Moody Blues, Days of Future Past
My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
New Order, Low Life
Nosound, Lightdark
Oceansize, Effloresce
Peter Gabriel, Security
Peter Gabriel, So
Phish, Rift
Pink Floyd, Animals
Pink Floyd, The Final Cut
Porcupine Tree, Signify
Porcupine Tree, Lightbulb Sun
Porcupine Tree, Fear of a Blank Planet
Psychedelic Furs, Talk, Talk, Talk
Pure Reason Revolution, The Dark Third
Queen, A Night at the Opera
Radiohead, Kid A
Riverside, Out of Myself
Rush 2112
Rush, A Farewell to Kings
Rush, Grace Under Pressure
Rush, Snakes and Arrows
Sarah McLachlan, Fumbling Toward Ecstacy
Simple Minds, New Gold Dream
Sixpence None the Richer (self titled)
Spock’s Beard, The Light
Spock’s Beard, Snow
Steven Wilson, Insurgentes
Talk Talk, The Colour of Spring
Talk Talk, The Spirit of Eden
Talk Talk, Laughing Stock
Tears for Fears, Songs from the Big Chair
The Cure, Disintegration
The Cure, Pornography
The Cure, Head on the Door
The Cure, Bloodflowers
The Doors (self titled)
The Fierce and the Dead, Part I
The Reasoning, Dark Angel
The Reasoning, Adventures in Neverland
The Smiths, Queen is Dead
The Stone Roses (self titled)
3RDegree, The Long Division
The Tangent, Le Sacre Du Travail
The Tangent, Not as Good as the Book
The Tangent, The Music That Died Alone
The The, Dusk
Thomas Dolby, Golden Age of Wireless
Thomas Dolby, The Flat Earth
Tin Spirits, Wired to the Earth
Tori Amos, Under the Pink
Traffic, John Barleycorn Must Die
Traffic, Mr. Fantasy
Transatlantic, SMPT: e
U2, The Joshua Tree
Ultravox, Lament
World Party, Goodbye Jumbo
XTC, Skylarking
XTC, Nonesuch
Yes, Close to the Edge
Yes, Drama
Yes, Fragile
Progarchy 