A friend shared a book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die that is a curated collection of some of the best albums of history and a website project which randomly selects one album per day to listen from the book.
I’m not gonna listen to them and write about them every day but I figured when I do listen to some, I’d write about them a bit here. And yes, I went through quite a discussion with myself whether to start writing about what I listen. I just can’t do anything without turning it into some sort of a project so here we are.
I don’t know much about music: I like to listen to a wide variety of genres but I don’t usually remember the artists, albums or song names - the lyrics usually stick in my head though. I have never really been an album listener. Rather, I’ve mostly listened to music in radio or playlists and there are only a handful of albums that I really like as albums (The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars by David Bowie, Talvikuningas by CMX and Piano Man by Billy Joel).
If you wanna read about my favourite songs, I’ve written my own Desert Island Discs list of 8 songs I’d bring with me to a desert island.
In the beginning of 2025, I wrote about how I prefer human curation over recommendation algorithms and this book + website project is a perfect for that. I felt the website alone was a bit of an information dump (although nicely paced with one album per day) so I got the book to find more human touch on the list. Instead of reading the book from front to cover, every time I pick up an album through the website, I search it in the book and read while I listen.
28.1.2025: In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson
The first album the website presented me was In the Court of the Crimson King. It is a progressive rock album from 1969 and definitely the kind that I probably would not have ran into on my own. That means the project is already doing its good work.
I listened the Expanded and Remastered Original Album Mix from Youtube Music and it has a runtime of 1 hour 7 minutes while the book reports the original as 44:01 and it includes three bonus tracks and apparently some extras in other songs.
The album is definitely interesting.
The Wikipedia article calls it
one of the earliest and most influential of the progressive rock genre, where the band combined the musical influences that rock music was founded upon with elements of jazz, classical, and symphonic music.
and in the book, Manish Agarwal describes it as
perhaps the first alternative anthem, featuring a gargantuan main riff, squalling sax, and apocalyptic visions.
For the little I understand about music, it does sound like both of those descriptions. There’s a lot going on in this album. I don’t know if I have ever described music as “full” but this one feels like it. The songs are long and winding explorations and seem to have quite little to do with each other. The difference between 21st Century Schizoid Man, I Talk To The Wind and Moonchild is so big that if I didn’t know better, I’d never guess they are from the same band - even less from the same album.
29.1.2025: Bryter Layter by Nick Drake
If yesterday’s album was a full experience and something very different, today’s album Bryter Layter by Nick Drake is quite big contrast to it. In the book, the album is described as an ideal introduction to Drake’s music.
To me, this album doesn’t really evoke any emotions. It’s the kind of album I’d love to listen on the background when hanging out in a pub but I don’t see myself putting the album on deliberately to listen.
30.1.2025: Aja by Steely Dan
I really liked today’s album Aja by Steely Dan, a jazz rock album from 1977. It’s the type of album that you can put on when you wake up, before you get into your doom scrolling habits and just jam out for a good 40 minutes and have a great start for a day.