Black Angels
Kronos Quartet · 1990
A string quartet record that refuses to behave like one—and never tells you why.
The Cold War
Forty-five years of proxy wars and mutually assured restraint.
- 7
- in music
- 10:49
- average
- 76 min
- in total
- 160
- across the network
All briefs
Sandinista!
The Clash · 1980
A 36-song triple LP released in December 1980. The Clash’s fourth studio album. Recorded over most of 1980 across London, Manchester, Jamaica, and New York. Produced by the band — primarily Mick Jones and Joe Strummer — with Mikey Dread’s participation. The only Clash album where all four members perform lead vocals.
Achtung Baby
U2 · 1991
Achtung Baby is U2’s seventh studio album, produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, recorded in Berlin and Dublin between late 1990 and mid-1991. It marked a deliberate departure from their earlier sound—incorporating alternative, industrial, and electronic dance influences—and reflected personal, introspective lyrical themes inspired by marital breakdowns, German reunification, and spiritual questioning. The Berlin sessions at Hansa Studios were fraught with tension and creative uncertainty, nearly leading to the band’s dissolution, until the improvised creation of 'One' provided a breakthrough. Subsequent Dublin sessions at Elsinore and Windmill Lane Studios yielded the completed album, characterised by distorted guitar textures, pronounced rhythm section, electronic beats, altered vocal techniques, and a self-conscious embrace of irony and artifice in both music and presentation. The album’s title and packaging were conceived to confound expectations and erect a 'mask' over its emotional weight. Its release inaugurated U2’s 1990s reinvention, culminating in the Zoo TV Tour and sustained musical experimentation throughout the decade.
Imagine
John Lennon · 1971
A 1971 studio album by John Lennon, recorded across Ascot Sound Studios, EMI Recording Studios, and the Record Plant in New York City. It was Lennon’s second solo studio album after Plastic Ono Band. He made it with Yoko Ono and Phil Spector as co-producers, aiming for major commercial success through a more accessible sound.
Lust for Life
Iggy Pop · 1977
A hard rock record made fast, in a real room, with real instruments, by people who had just survived something. No myth. Just sound.
The Joshua Tree
U2 · 1987
A record made in two Irish houses. Guitar, bass, and drums played live through monitors. Open, ambient sound tied to the room. Antipathy toward US foreign policy held beside fascination with American space and ideals. Sequenced the night before delivery. Not ambient. Not experimental. Not American-made — but deeply, tensely, about America.
Rust in Peace
Megadeth · 1990
Rust in Peace is Megadeth’s 1990 studio album, recorded at Rumbo Recorders in March 1990. It is the first Megadeth album completed with a producer who wasn’t fired — Mike Clink — though Mustaine later said most of the work was done by himself, Max Norman, and engineer Micajah Ryan.