BEST 50 BRITISH ALBUMS

Home-grown talent to test your home-grown kit PART 1

A two-part special feature to celebrate our passion for vinyl: our favourite 50 British albums – each one guaranteed to give your system a workout

Adefinitive list of the 50 best British albums simply cannot exist, whatever its purpose, and it would be futile even to attempt to rank those we have here. But it is, at least, a number that we think offers a decent cross section of what this country has offered to the music world over the past few decades.

What’s more, these are all great test discs. They aren’t necessarily those with the highest production values, but they do all highlight those facets of reproduced sound that it is imperative any good system gets right. There are tricky rhythms, exaggerated dynamic shifts and plenty of dense textures to explore sonically.

Your favourite album might not be on here, and there will be at least a few you think are naff, but these are the albums we’ll continue playing on repeat. The first 25 of 50 are covered here, for the second part, turn to page 66.

HOUNDS OF LOVE Kate Bush (1985)

Few would argue against Hounds Of Love’s status as one of the great British albums. It wasn’t the first time Bush had used complex musical computers to guide her compositions, but this record most comfortably inhabits the space between electronic and the human, earthy and ethereal. The songwriting also witnesses Bush at the top of her craft.

BLACK SABBATH Black Sabbath (1970)

There are more modern British metal albums that could have made this list, but this record is proof that it doesn’t take eight distortion pedals and a double kick-drum to create a petrifyingly heavy sound. Black Sabbath is as entrenched in psychedelia as it is heavy metal, and, almost unbelievably, this year marks its 50th anniversary.

TOMORROW’S HARVEST Boards of Canada (2013)

Boards of Canada’s blend of field recordings with often ambient synth lines has inspired a hoard of software plug-in developers who would seek to emulate their immediately recognisable signature sound. Tomorrow’s Harvest might not always the most accessible of records, but it’s an intriguing and affecting listen.

ASTRAL WEEKS Van Morrison (1968)

It takes less than ten seconds of Astral Weeks, his second studio album, for Van Morrison’s voice to be heard, and that’s exactly how it ought to be. At once laid back and effusive, the Northern Irish singer-songwriter’s iconic voice lays waste to anything attempting to reproduce it without sufficient dynamic aptitude or a spacious enough soundstage.

ENTERTAINMENT! Gang Of Four (1979)

Gang Of Four’s debut album almost perfectly defines the word angular as a musical descriptor. Andy Gill’s guitar lines jut through Entertainment!’s schizophrenic phrasing like broken glass, and they benefit infinitely from having their lines finely drawn by a high-resolution reproduction and sufficiently talented hi-fi system.

THE HAWK IS HOWLING Mogwai (2008)

A lot of the material for The Hawk Is Howling was written for a Colombian film soundtrack, though it was never used. As such, it lies somewhere between the OSTS and studio albums that make up the rest of Mogwai’s diverse, but never disjointed, catalogue. Who wouldn’t want to spin a record with a track titled I Love You, I’m Going To Blow Up Your School. Absurd brilliance.

IN OUR HEADS Hot Chip (2012)

After 2010’s One Life Stand, Hot Chip matured somewhat, adding a few more dimensions to their dance-pop song craft. In Our Heads focused almost singlemindedly on playful entertainment – though the record offers a few breathers, chances to ponder, it’s mostly a stern test of your system’s timing and punch – as well as how loud it can go.

BLACKSTAR David Bowie (2016)

No list of greatest British albums would be complete without Bowie – the difficulty is deciding which to include. This Tony Visconti-produced gem, released on Bowie’s 69th birthday, two days before he died, makes the cut for having his creative genius perfectly complemented by jazz saxophonist Donny Mccaslin. As parting gifts go, Blackstar is among the finest.

POWER, CORRUPTION & LIES New Order (1983)

Power, Corruption & Lies was arguably the record that defined New Order as being a band apart from Joy Division. Its use of synthesizers is far broader than on the band’s debut album Movement, but still intelligently intertwined with guitars and acoustic percussion. It established a New Order sound that is both texturally dense and refreshingly spacious.

PSYCHODRAMA Dave (2019)

Wryly humorous, self-aware social commentary had already elevated Dave to semistardom, but PSYCHODRAMA is on another level. His wordplay and cultural references have been toned down somewhat in this important collection of songs exploring what it means to be young, black and in tune with mental health in the fractured UK.

THE KING OF LIMBS Radiohead (2011)

Radiohead’s least accessible album is rewarding through a decent hi-fi system. There are few phrases to find yourself whistling along to, but The King Of Limbs is not bereft of melody. Much of the arrangements’ ornamentation can appear arbitrary and haphazard when heard on sub-par kit. This is a lesson in organisation and in how to knit together of a piece of music.

THERE IS LOVE IN YOU Four Tet (2010)

There Is Love In You marked a high point in Kieran Hebden’s solo career as Four Tet. Its idiosyncratic rhythmic patterns are often deceptively simple, with a few overlapping motifs, bound by an acoustic drum kit, over a cacophony of percussion. The key is in how these strands interact dynamically, so they require a taut and subtly expressive system.

AMBIENT 1: MUSIC FOR AIRPORTS Brian Eno (1978)

Brian Eno’s fascination with complexity born of simplicity is highighted on Ambient 1. For its second track, for example, Eno simply recorded each ‘ah’ sound and left them to loop with varying delays to create a cavernous, overlapping soundscape that remains one of his finest ambient compositions.

COCOA SUGAR Young Fathers (2018)

Young Fathers softened some of the edges with their third studio album, but the result is no less arresting. Cocoa Sugar could be described as an experimental electronic record as much as a rap or hip-hop album, driven by often off-kilter rhythms and a generous helping of low-end that your speakers have to keep taut while also delivering textural insight.

ONE WORLD John Martyn (1977)

Producer Chris Blackwell made use of his surroundings to achieve One World’s magnificent sound, setting up a PA system to fire across a lake on the Berkshire farmhouse at which the album was recorded. Microphones were placed by the water’s edge to capture the sound reflected back. “It created the most magical atmosphere for recording,” said engineer Phil Brown.

LOVE DELUXE Sade (1992)

Sade Adu’s velvet vocal is showcased on Love Deluxe. The singer is often sonically at odds with the accompanying instrumentation, distorted guitars and hard-hit trip-hop percussion, which at times pierce the album’s soulful grooves. The juxtaposition only serves to further highlight her gorgeous tonality, and to give your system’s midrange a full workout.

NOBODY WANTS TO BE HERE AND NOBODY WANTS TO LEAVE The Twilight Sad (2014)

If you’re looking for guitar textures worthy of an archaeological dig, few can offer them on the same scale as The Twilight Sad. Nobody Wants To Be Here… is the band’s fourth studio album and its songwriting is really the most complete, with anthemic melodies deserving of a larger audience.

PINK MOON Nick Drake (1972)

If the idea of this improved sound is to bring the artist closer to the listener, then there are few better examples than Nick Drake’s Pink Moon. As much as you can hear fingers shuffling between the strings and live in the body of Drake’s guitar, the level of intimacy here helps foster an even more tender relationship between the listener and the music.

NEW HYMN TO FREEDOM Szun Waves (2018)

Szun Waves’ improvised, unedited second album New Hymn To Freedom crafts a psychedelic landscape that is both sonically dense and gloriously fluid. It asks the same of your speakers as any jazz recording: expert timing to navigate obscure rhythmic patterns, space for instruments to articulate their lines, and dynamic versatility to capture the unpredictability.

HEAVEN OR LAS VEGAS Cocteau Twins (1990)

The shoegaze genre had many imitators and was chastised by much of the music press. But a minor resurgence in recent years has given us all reason to revisit the shimmering guitars and gliding vocal lines of Cocteau Twins’ Heaven Or Las Vegas. Despite the often indiscernible lyrics, there is so much here to dig through that it usually pays to listen in silence.

PEANUT BUTTER BLUES & MELANCHOLY JAM Ghostpoet (2011)

The title of Obaro Ejimiwe’s debut album as Ghostpoet belies its darkness. It rides on a wave of grimy, undulating synths and fractured beats, with Ejimiwe’s languid delivery hovering like a cloud of smoke. Nominated for the 2011 Mercury Prize, Peanut Butter Blues… was far from ignored upon release but only improves with age.

UNKNOWN PLEASURES Joy Division (1979)

Unknown Pleasures shaped British guitar music in such a way that it is difficult to imagine where we’d be without its release. There is beauty in the spaces between Bernard Sumner’s sparse guitar lines and Ian Curtis’s affecting vocal. It is four decades since Curtis took his own life, and there seems no more fitting tribute than to play his most seminal work.

SINGULARITY Jon Hopkins (2018)

Blurring lines between ambient techno and acid house, Jon Hopkins’ Singularity is a masterpiece of fractured beats and blissfully pulsing bass. At first it seems minimal, but deeper listening reveals many synth strands. It deserves a pair of speakers with the dynamic range to accentuate those leading notes that drive those compound rhythms.

LP1 FKA twigs (2014)

LP1 is a meld of electronic experimentation and sharp-tongued lyricism juxtaposed with Tahliah Barnett’s almost angelic vocal. It was followed last year by MAGDALENE, an equally inventive but decidedly more vulnerable and refined record, which proved we’ve only just begun to experience the breadth of FKA twigs’ considerable talent.

SELECTED AMBIENT WORKS 85-92 Aphex Twin (1992)

Richard James has claimed ignorance to any of the classical or electronic artists by whom Selected Ambient Works appears to have been influenced. There is an otherness to the record that, despite its apparent forebears, keeps it from being at all derivative in a way that leads us to believe those comments are true.