Albums are albums for different reasons.

Ata Kak’s self-produced album was lost for years before being found in a record shop and reissued, gaining him an international fanbase after decades. Rainbow Music is an album made for vinyl in 2022 and is performing really well in Japan for some reason. Green was originally released in the US with strange environmental sounds added in. Hiroshi Yoshimura named all of the tracks words with double e just because he liked how it looks. Meeting with a Judas Tree was recorded with the window open, letting the neighborhood in. Gleem is an OST for a comic book.

Here are those albums woven together—it’s like they are hanging out together for an afternoon. You get some variety, like a playlist, but also get the progression and satisfaction of an album (in this case, five albums).

This is an experiment that follows some rules:

• The track order of each album stays the same, though a few tracks were skipped. It is important to keep the arc of each album, so you feel the progressions of them all at the same time.
• The albums are ordered so that each set of five songs (one from each album) has their own movement. You start more energized and have a gradual come down.
• As each album goes on, the progression in the sets of five change, like the albums do.

I selected these albums together because they experiment in how or why they were made, which gives them cool stories, and sometimes a shared sound, too. They each express a letting go, and a freedom, in different and similar ways.

They are holding hands with laced fingers.