Oct 27, 2026, 11:51 PMhaving any track from Shad’s “A Short Story About A War” (2018) come up in my shuffled playlist makes me want to listen to the entire album. and the entire album is in the playlist SPR is shuffling. it’s just that good. (thanks @packetcat for the tip way back when)
Oct 27, 2026, 11:53 PMevery track is great, start to finish, but you really need to just listen to it as an album. pretend it’s one track. it is.
Oct 27, 2026, 11:57 PMconcept albums are a tough sell here in the Age of the Single when albums have been reduced mostly to being a container for a collection of contemporary singles. but concept albums are the full-length motion picture version of recorded music. sometimes the story takes more than one song, sometimes the story takes an album, or two, or even three, but like, you sit and watch a two hour movie sometimes too. take the time to check out album-length works, they’re often rich and hearty and good for the soul.
Oct 28, 2026, 12:00 AMit sets a vibe like it’s some audiophile thing, but if you dig music, you owe it to yourself to set up a little listening station specifically for intentionally sitting and listening to music and not doing anything else. set aside a little time for you and music. and then you can really listen to it. you can let it take you places. you can let it make you feel things. you can learn from it. you can have a treat.
Oct 28, 2026, 12:00 AMI listen to music pretty constantly, but I still make time to sit and listen to music, too.
Oct 28, 2026, 12:59 AMAlso Shad is just an incredible rapper and poet across the board - check his whole catalog, it’s fucking great. (yes I’m listening to the whole album now because sometimes that’s what I do before bed.)
@djsundog David Arkenstone did a story that took three albums to tell. In the Wake of the Wind, Quest of the Dream Warrior, and Return of the Guardians are scores for movies that we only have maps and a bit of text to tell us about.
@djsundog I like an album too for capturing an era of an artist’s work. The individual Beatles albums tell a different story than their greatest hits compilations, for example.
Oct 28, 2026, 1:11 AM
@djsundog Is there still a place for long concept albums in an era of snaps, shorts and other "one minute is too long" media?
Oct 28, 2026, 12:51 AM@smallsees absolutely. there’ll always be a place for long-form storytelling. it’s just being neglected by the loudest voices right now.
Oct 28, 2026, 12:52 AM@smallsees @djsundog yes, just like there’s plenty of people still reading books and watching feature-length films, plenty of people still listen to comprehensive albums.
The idea that because something isn’t The Most Popular Way means there’s no point in doing it has done more harm than the dopamine machines.
@djsundog Albums are my preferred unit for listening to music, by far.
I don't want to yuck anyone's singles yum, but it's just not for me. I care about the multiple fractal timescales of composition.
(even my own music, a lot of which I didn't really care about treating as chronological at the time, in retrospect has patterns that show up when you think on an album level, and it's actually really nice to have those different time capsules in a way that reconstructs how I felt about the world and what kind of music I was trying to make during those different parts of my life)