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Plastic Beach (2010)
Released
The Gorillaz story strands its band on an island of discarded material in the South Pacific. Let the opening wash of orchestra run into “Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach,” where Snoop Dogg greets you over a much drier beat. The island keeps changing with each new voice, down to the intimate duet on “To Binge.”
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The ArchAndroid (2010)
Released
Janelle Monáe’s Cindi Mayweather story reaches its second and third suites here. Each suite begins with an overture, so the shift into “Suite III Overture” feels like moving into a different part of Metropolis. The sprint through “Dance or Die” early on and the long final stretch of “BabopbyeYa” give the two parts very different pacing.
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Neptune's Lair (1999)
Released
Drexciya’s electro sketches suggest a settlement beneath the water. Begin at “Temple of Dos De Agua,” then let the skipping drum patterns and submerged-sounding synths on “Andreaen Sand Dunes” fill in the terrain. Titles give you locations, while the sounds make the distance between them feel tangible.
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Splendor & Misery (2016)
Released
A survivor of an uprising and an onboard computer are the main characters on clipping.’s interstellar cargo ship. Listen to the alarm-like jolts and machinery rhythms around Daveed Diggs’s voice. When gospel-like voices take over on “Story 5,” it feels like stepping out of the ship’s mechanical noise and into a different room.
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Deltron 3030 (2000)
Released
Del the Funky Homosapien enters a future of rap battles, hostile institutions, and new technology. The grand opening of “3030” makes his city feel immense. Later, the loping “Time Keeps on Slipping” reduces its scale to a voice worrying about time itself. Follow those shifts in size to hear an imaginary city with more than one pace.
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Mothership Connection (1975)
Released
Parliament opens a broadcast from somewhere in space and turns it into a party. Hear the radio greeting in “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)” give way to the invitation in “Mothership Connection (Star Child).” By “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker),” the repeating crowd responses make it sound like everybody has come aboard.
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Discovery (2001)
Released
Daft Punk’s album later became the soundtrack to a film about musicians from another planet. Pairing the two makes the busy bounce of “One More Time” and the guitar rush of “Aerodynamic” play like movement through adjoining scenes. Even with the screen off, those sudden changes of texture give the opening run a sense of travel.
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Equinoxe Infinity (2018)
Released
Jean-Michel Jarre returns to the mysterious Watchers from the cover of Équinoxe, giving the listener two possible worlds through alternate covers. The ten movements leave space for you to imagine what the figures are watching. Try the low, expectant texture of “The Watchers” and the brighter pulse that takes over in “Flying Totems.”
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Spirit World Field Guide (2020)
Released
Aesop Rock frames this album as a field guide to a world beside our own. On “The Gates,” his rapid voice seems to notice more than the beat can fit, while “Jumping Coffin” makes strange encounters sound like instructions a traveler might pass along. It rewards listening as a sequence of dispatches from the same place.
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Time (1981)
Released
Electric Light Orchestra’s spoken “Prologue” opens onto the rushing chorus of “Twilight,” as if a door into 2095 has opened. “Yours Truly, 2095” introduces a computerized companion, and “Ticket to the Moon” lets the homesickness of the traveler catch up with the novelty. The sequence gives the same future two very different feelings.
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Diamond Dogs (1974)
Released
Bowie begins with a spoken walk through Hunger City, then lets the band swing into the riff of “Diamond Dogs.” The city feels more claustrophobic across “Sweet Thing,” “Candidate,” and the reprise, where a voice that had been addressing the street starts to sound like it’s cornered inside it. Hear those three tracks together.
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The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974)
Released
The brisk piano and guitars of the title track set Rael loose in New York. By “In the Cage,” a tight keyboard pattern gives his surreal new surroundings a much more confined feel. Follow those changes across Peter Gabriel’s story and you can hear the distance from Broadway even when the plot gets hard to picture.
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The Hazards of Love (2009)
Released
A forest queen, a shapeshifter, and a woman named Margaret keep crossing paths in the Decemberists’ folk opera. “Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)” puts a guest voice at the center of the forest, while “The Queen’s Rebuke” turns the same setting into hard-rock territory. The changing voices make it possible to follow who holds power from scene to scene.
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Into the Electric Castle (2010)
Released
A cast from different eras wakes up inside an alien experiment. The performers keep that cast audible while the track sequence moves through “Tunnel of Light,” “The Garden of Emotions,” and “The Castle Hall.” Lucassen’s deliberately warm vintage synths give the rock opera’s strange architecture a surprisingly inviting sound.
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Sagan om ringen (1970)
Released
Bo Hansson gives Tolkien’s Middle-earth a route through organ-led instrumentals. Listen for the pace to change between “Första vandringen,” the opening journey, and the later piece for Elrond’s house and the trip south. The track titles give you landmarks, and Hansson’s keyboards give each stage a feel of its own.
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The Point! (1970)
Released
Harry Nilsson narrates the story of Oblio, a boy whose round head marks him as an outsider in a land of pointed things. Listen for “Me and My Arrow” to come back in fragments as their surroundings change. The running commentary and recurring tunes let you follow the trip into the Pointless Forest with your eyes closed.
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Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ Kömmandöh (1973)
Released
Magma gives its imagined civilization a language you can hear in the massed voices of this recording. Every return to the clipped choral syllables feels like another glimpse of the same ceremony. The concentrated vocal rise through “Nebëhr Gudahtt” is a useful landmark when the words themselves offer few cues to an unfamiliar ear.
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Tales of Mystery and Imagination: Edgar Allan Poe (1976)
Released
On the Alan Parsons Project’s first album, the trip through Poe’s fiction includes a whole suite devoted to the House of Usher. “Prelude,” “Arrival,” and the shorter movements make the approach, rooms, and collapse feel like steps in a single visit. Listen to the 1976 sequence for how long the album holds you inside this one story.
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Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds (1978)
Released
Richard Burton narrates an invasion that starts near Horsell Common. The insistent theme in “The Eve of the War” is the sound to remember as the record leaves quiet countryside for the chaos around “Thunder Child.” This is Jeff Wayne’s original recording, with its recurring orchestral and synthesizer sounds linking the scenes.
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Tallahassee (2003)
Released
John Darnielle puts a fictional couple in a house in Tallahassee, Florida. The worn-down intimacy of the title track, the threats in “The House That Dripped Blood,” and the buildup on “Oceanographer’s Choice” make the rooms feel different as their relationship changes. Listening in order feels like seeing the same house under different light.
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