The seven hundred and fourth album: #704 Massive Attack - Blue Lines

There's a chill feel to this album - Unfinished Sympathy is the one I recognise best of those, but there are others in a similar mold. It's electronic music with an R&B vibe, some light rap and relaxing enough that you can have it sit in the background. It's interesting, a bit dreamy, but with enough to catch on to, just some nice and lovely easy listening music with a bit of substance.

The seven hundred and third album: #703 The KLF - White Room

We're kicking off with more electronic music from the early nineties. The KLF is hitting a nostalgic vibe, where the sample heavy sound would have been new at the time, but now feels old fashioned in its application and mixing of sounds. It works fine, even if it's a type of music that's really dependent on my mood to see whether it connects well enough. It's a good thing to listen to though, even if it doesn't work for every track.

The two hundred and fifty-second classic recording: #822 Manuel Ponce - Concierto del Sur

There's something that feels more accessible about this piece, the guitar feeling like such an uncommon instrument in one of these pieces that its focus here stands out to add some energy to the piece, something grounded and darker that gets contrasted against some far more ethereal sounding violins and lighter touches from other instruments. There is a good mix of influences here, unconventional for what normally get but it's something that helps develop the song really well.

The seven hundred and second album: #701 Slint - Spiderland

The darkness that seems to have surrounded the band during the recording of this album comes through in its sound, a dark and haunting sound with vocals overwhelmed by the dark guitars. It goes hard and the intensity feels like it really comes through from the band, in a way that doesn't impact my mood as a listener but gives a deep insight on how the band seems to feel. It's hard to listen to, fascinating but also one where I'm glad it feels a bit distant.

The seven hundred and first album: #702 U2 - Achtung Baby

As one of the big albums of U2, I feel I've already been exposed to most of these tracks in some way. As you'd expect, it mixes the big crowd pleasers like One with stranger choices like Until the End of the World, with its odd choice of subjects and focus on them that shows they are a band that looks at what's going on in the world. It's maybe not as deep as that sounds, but there's still that feeling of wanting to push the music and lyrics further than what the minimum would be and it works really well to create that much more of a masterpiece album.

The seven hundredth album: #700 Sepultura - Arise

This album really just gives you what it says it will, a burst of high energy heavy metal taking its energy from the other greats in the genre. There isn't a twist here, it doesn't feel like it's doing anything different, but it's an approach that's working. It's uncompromising in what it does, even if you're unlikely to change your minds on the genre in either direction.

The six hundred and ninety-ninth album: #699 Saint Etienne - Foxbase Alpha

I think this is where we reach a familiar point in the evolution of dance music - the dominating beat, overlaid with a female pop vocal that's quite gentle and at times an aggressive male rap. The music strays towards the gentler side, not focused on a heavy beat, but it's the vocals that are dropped from a track first, the beat always remains. While it works for the more focused songs with vocals, the tracks do wear on musically after a while, with the nearly eight minutes of Stoned To Say The Least being especially slow. After a while it loses its appeal and becomes a bit too long, but there's also a good set of indie songs in the mix here.

The two hundred and forty-sixth TV show: #51 Bonanza

While I'm not bonanas for Bonanza, I have to say that it has held up better than the other than other westerns of the era. The stories are more nuanced, whether it's making you feel sorry and understand the bad guys rather than making them simple criminals, or having some conflicts between main characters that don't resolve as easily. It still feels very episodic, but it felt especially in the second season episodes that I watched that the show had developed something quite a bit more nuanced and in depth. The show is long enough that I can't watch all of it and there are plenty of places where the show is of its time, but there's something here to see.

The two hundred and fifty-first classical recording: #497 Antonin Dvorak - Symphony no. 9

The opening movement of this symphony is so grand, soaring and energetic that it sets up an attention grabbing sound. It follows this with a smaller, more intimate second movement that plays on nostalgia, coming down with a gentler, more pastoral sound after those bursts of energy. The build up to the finale is slow, notable for its many intricacies of its sounds, leading up to a strong, if less exuberant finale than its opening. The arc works brilliantly though, setting up and slowing it down at the right speeds.

The six hundred and ninety-eighth album: #698 Pearl Jam - Ten

I'm not sure Pearl Jam's music is in any way groundbreaking for this period, but the grunge sound feels perfected on their debut album, an artistic expression of a sound that can often feel loose and simpler. There's a lot of longing and pain in the album, but it's expressed in such an exquisite way that it's incredibly listenable.