Tilt (1995)

Scott Walker's first studio album in eleven years is the hardest listen on this list and one of the most vivid. Cryptic, fragmentary lyrics sit over industrial clangs, organ and the strings of the Sinfonia of London, so each song moves like a nightmare that keeps changing scenery without warning. The opener, Farmer in the City, subtitled Remembering Pasolini, is the most approachable entry point. Intensity: bleak, funereal and sometimes abrasive. Choose it for dread, not drift.