June 2026
Five records the editors listened to with their eyes closed. No rankings, no algorithms. Just ears.
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01Bitches Brew
Miles Davis · 1970picked by Mike G.
This is not the easiest jazz record to love and I won't try to sell it as one. But when the two sides open into that electric broth — Miles not playing notes but conjuring temperatures — you understand that funk and everything that came after passes through here. I put it on when I want to remind myself that music can still frighten. On vinyl the double gatefold is an object worth owning.
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02Pink Moon
Nick Drake · 1972picked by Emma
Twenty-eight minutes, voice and guitar, almost nothing else. Nick Drake delivered the tapes to the label by leaving them at reception, without saying a word. This is the record I put on late, when the house is quiet and I don't want any production getting between me and a song. The title track runs two and a half minutes and contains more truth than entire albums. Find it on an original Island pressing if you can.
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03Remain in Light
Talking Heads · 1980picked by Sergio
Brian Eno and Talking Heads discovering Fela Kuti's Africa and bringing it back into New York post-punk. Everyone knows Once in a Lifetime, but it's the whole of side A that never stops spinning — rhythmic layers accumulating into hypnosis. This is the record I put on when someone tells me that eighties rock was all plastic. Then I let them listen and they go quiet.
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04Music for 18 Musicians
Steve Reich · 1978picked by John
An hour of pulses transforming so slowly you don't notice until you're already somewhere else. Reich doesn't write melodies, he writes processes — and this is the most beautiful one there is. I put it on when I need to work and want time to stop rushing. On vinyl, with the sides forcing you to stop and turn the record, the ritual is part of the music.
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05The Drift
Scott Walker · 2006picked by John
This is not a record, it's a place you return from changed. Scott Walker at sixty deciding to abandon everything that had made him likeable and building something terrible and necessary. There is a track where they beat a piece of meat as an instrument. I don't put it on often — you can't — but when I do it reminds me that music exists which doesn't want to please, only to exist.
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