Reveling in its split persona, Richard D James’ 2001 masterwork spent its 2CD run time careening from moments of glitchy electronic mayhem to moments of beautiful and serene Satie-esque piano. It was also contentious on its release: obscure, strange, histrionic, flawed and a turning point in jazz, embracing improvisational sounds and electric instruments. One of the most important albums, let alone doubles, of all time. Its provocative, sensual sleeve was just the beginning of the lusty blues magnificence that lay inside.ġ3 Miles Davis, ‘Bitches Brew’ (Columbia) ‘Electric Ladyland’ was Jimi Hendrix’s final album before his death in 1969 – but what a high he left on.
The LPs complimented each other perfectly.ġ4 Jimi Hendrix, ‘Electric Ladyland’ (Reprise) Big Boi and Andre essentially wrote an album each and packaged them as one here.
The raucous reaction to tracks like ‘Hey Ya!’ and ‘The Way You Move’ at the Atlanta pair’s reunion dates this summer is testament to the vibrant imagination splurge of this double LP. The two halves of the album represented day and the night and Corgan got in Flood to produce.ġ5 Outkast, ‘Speakerboxxx/The Love Below’ (Arista Records)
16 The Smashing Pumpkins, ‘Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness’ (Virgin)Ī whopping 24 tracks saw Billy Corgan and his gang widen their sonic palette. 10 years on, tracks like ‘Let the Bells Ring’ and ‘Babe You Turn Me On’ have precisely the same powerful pull they did a decade ago. One fast and furious, the other slow-burning and lusty, Cave’s 2004 double-disc epic packaged into one release two sides to the gloom poet. It’s in fact strange The Boss hasn’t written more double albums – he’s known to write up to 60 songs for each album, the prolific bastard.ġ7 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, ‘Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus’ (Mute) ‘New Moon’, released in 2007 after the musician’s apparent, only hammered home what a gifted talent the music world had lost.ġ8 Bruce Springsteen, ‘The River’ (Columbia)ġ980’s ‘The River’ spawned 7 singles: testament to the record’s cavalcade of ready-made fist-pumping hits ripe for the charts. Posthumous LP or double album? We count it as both, though we can’t say for certain how many of the songs on Elliott’s swansong the troubled songwriter would have included on the final tracklist. Apart from Rolf Harris’s spoken word.ġ9 Elliott Smith, ‘New Moon’ (Kill Rock Stars) The first half of the 2005 album had more hit-type tracks but the whole thing is gold. Hip-hop’s greatest legend’s sad swansong, released two weeks after his death, ‘Life After Death’ is the definitive mafiosa rap album: its 109-minute sprawl of lush beats and laconic flow telling a gripping story of trouble at the top for Biggie.īush played ‘A Sky Of Honey’ live during her Before The Dawn tour and it was one of the greatest moments in performance history. 21 Notorious BIG, ‘Life After Death’ (Bad Boy) Its 23 tracks were definitely not all perfect but highlights ‘The Day the World Went Away’, ‘We’re in This Together’ and ‘Starfuckers, Inc.’ stand with some of NINs’ finest work. was released in September 1999 and immediately hit number one in the US. The third album from Ohio industrialists, Trent Reznor and co. “Bob Mould’s guitar sputters and splinters at earpiercing feedback into a thousand pieces, giving the impression of Hüsker Dü being a far larger and more forbidding unit than it is,” read NME’s review of Hüsker Dü’s cult 1984 album about a boy escaping an unhappy home life into an even worse world.Ģ2 Nine Inch Nails, ‘The Fragile’ (Nothing) Some said it was too long, but NME gave it 8/10. With the help of LCD’s James Murphy, some little known newcomer called David Bowie and others, the Montreal band abandoned rock’n’roll and made a dance record. It’s also about hanging on to my remaining shreds of sanity and the blue sky that comes the day after a terrible storm, and it’s a love letter to life itself, in all its beautiful, horrible glory.” It’s only four tracks long but lasts almost 80 minutes.Ģ5 Eels, ‘Blinking Lights and Other Revelations’ (Vagrant)Įels frontman E described ‘Blinking Lights…’ as being about “God and all the questions related to the subject of God. The Canadians’ 2001 post-rock adventure remains one of the genre’s defining moments – a sumptuous, combusting collision of orchestral instruments and guitars that stir slowly towards eruption.