#555 Genesis – The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

This is undoubtedly the best Genesis album, despite strong competition from Selling England By The Pound. It also ranks (imho) amongst the best ever prog rock records. It’s just really bloody good, and it’s perhaps unsurprising that Gabriel left the band to go solo during the album tour, since the group in that makeup had …

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#549 Genesis – Trespass

This is Genesis’s second actual album but first proper. In that this is where the prog rock elements of Genesis are first hewn from the rock. They may be a little rough and chunky round the edges, and they were to sharpen and polish them considerably for their subsequent release, Nursery Cryme, but all the …

#1065 Queen – Queen II

This is a poorly named album, Queen can do better than that. Although it’s a close follow up from their first album 'Queen' in terms of timing (they recorded it in the studio only a month after the release of Q1) it shows clearly how quickly they were progressing with ideas, musical inventiveness and a …

#785 Gustav Mahler – Das Lied Von Der Erde

I’m not as much of a Mahler freak as my best friend, but I know a classic composer’s haircut when I see one. I am far more familiar with Mahler’s symphonies than any of his other works, and bought this CD on my friend’s recommendation, feeling that I really should try and delve a little …

#1254 Sun Ra – Space Is The Place

This album is credited to Sun Ra and his Astro Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra, which is without doubt the coolest band name in the universe, period. It was released in 1973, which makes it the same age as me, yet it’ s generally holding up a whole lot better than I am. It’s weird, futuristic, avant-garde, …

#1494 Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds

I was thinking of this album only a few weeks ago after I bought a second-hand record of Rick Wakeman’s Journey to the Centre of the World and was comparing the two. They’re very similar in terms of concept and approach, putting to music a classic of early sci-fi literature, but with different degrees of …

#545 Genesis – Nursery Cryme

Ah now, Genesis. Or Weirdy British Folk-Prog. This is before Genesis went all synthy and Collins-led, back when they were fricking awesome. This is their third album from 1971, though I tend to think of it as the second, with Trespass feeling like the first Genesis album proper. I recall my introduction to Genesis very …