Top 20 albums

1. Achtung Baby – U2
2. This Binary Universe – BT
3. Zooropa – U2
4. Pop – U2
5. Beaucoup Fish – Underworld
6. Non Zero Sumness – Planet Funk
7. Super Extra Gravity – The Cardigans
8. Lost in a Moment – Shrift
9. Second Toughest in the Infants – Underworld
10. Long Gone Before Daylight – The Cardigans

11. Phantom Moon – Duncan Sheik
12. Ariels – Bent
13. Two Against Nature – Steely Dan
14. Gran Reserva – dZihan & Kamien
15. (Self-titled first album) – Duncan Sheik
16. A Night on Earth – Crazy P
17. Mikazuki Rock – Spitz
18. Souvenir – Spitz
19. Union – Chara
20. Folk – SuneoHair

At first I wanted to keep this list strictly to 10, but I couldn’t bear to leave the others out, as they’re all brilliant and deserve mentioning, particularly the Japanese entries, fine works indeed.

These albums represent the finest in my collection, and each exhibits mature and powerful expressions of emotion and atmosphere, while the works themselves are crafted with an exceptionally high level of engineering and production.

In this selection there are emotions that are as grand as the expanse of the cosmos, as well as those so close to the heart that they seem to be intimacy incarnate in sound. There is love, joy, pain, excitement, fun, disappointment, anger, restlessness and hope in the songs and pieces of music in these recordings. They are powerful and gentle, poignant and playful.

The top 10 in particular exhibit the highest level of production that I’ve encountered. Any one of them contains examples of compression, EQing, and balanced mixing that transcends mere engineering and elevates the practice into art. In these albums, the engineering truly is a part of the sound, not merely a tool with which to craft it; proof in practice that good engineers are artists in their own right, just as musicians are.