The Best Progressive Rock Albums of the '70s

Fripp had already decided to dissolve the band, and the breakup was announced before the record reached shops — a posthumous album by a group that no longer existed. Ian McDonald came back from the 1969 lineup to play saxophone on 'Starless', built on a melody John Wetton had written and had rejected for the previous album. No plain edition exists on streaming; the expanded one at least uses the original mix.

Peter Gabriel was writing consciously against the Americanisation of Britain, which is why the record is stuffed with supermarket puns and a Labour Party slogan for a title. 'Firth of Fifth' opens with a Tony Banks piano figure in shifting time and contains the Steve Hackett solo that wins every poll of these things. Phil Collins sings lead on one track. Gabriel left after the next album.

Bill Bruford finished this and quit immediately, joining King Crimson rather than tour it — Alan White learned the whole set in roughly three days. Eddy Offord and the band assembled the title suite by physically splicing tape together. Three tracks fill the entire LP. 'Siberian Khatru' closes it, and Roger Dean's sleeve set up a visual identity the band never escaped.

During the sessions a heavy, shaven-headed stranger wandered into Abbey Road and it took the band a while to work out it was Syd Barrett. 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' is his elegy, wrapped around the rest of the record like brackets. Roy Harper sang 'Have a Cigar' because he happened to be recording next door. The sleeve came shrink-wrapped in opaque black plastic.

Three tracks, no bass guitar — Hugh Banton covered the low end with organ pedals — and David Jackson blowing two saxophones at once. 'A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers' takes the entire second side and follows a lighthouse keeper losing his mind across twenty-three minutes. Robert Fripp guests. The band split the following year, exhausted, having somehow become enormous in Italy.

Kerry Minnear trained at the Royal Academy of Music, which explains a great deal about why none of this sounds like anybody else. The title is a pun: octo opus, eight works. 'Knots' is interlocking a cappella counterpoint borrowed from Renaissance madrigals, with a lyric lifted from R. D. Laing. Their drummer was hurt in a motorcycle crash mid-sessions and had to be replaced.

Christian Vander invented an entire language, Kobaïan, and a mythology about refugees from Earth, then wrote seven movements of massed choir and ostinato to carry them. He has said the project came out of grief at John Coltrane's death, and it shows: 'Hortz fur dehn stekehn west' owes far more to spiritual jazz and Stravinsky than to anything British. Spotify strips every diacritic and dates it 1988.

Four sides, one track each, roughly nineteen minutes apiece — a severe format even in 1970. 'Moon In June' is effectively a Robert Wyatt solo record hiding inside a Soft Machine album: he wrote it, sang it, played most of it, and it is the only thing here with words on it. The others had stopped caring about songs, and he left soon afterwards.

Critics called Aqualung a concept album, so Ian Anderson made the most absurd one he could and credited the lyrics to a fictional eight-year-old whose prize poem had been disqualified for obscenity. 'Thick as a Brick' is one continuous forty-three-minute piece, split only because vinyl has two sides. The sleeve was a twelve-page fake local newspaper. It went to number one in America.

H. R. Giger painted the sleeve years before Alien, and the label made him airbrush out a phallus; the original gatefold had a die-cut panel that opened to reveal the face behind it. 'Karn Evil 9' ends with a man losing an argument to a computer. Radio 1 banned 'Jerusalem'. Carl Palmer was triggering electronic drums here before most people had heard one.

Milan, 1972, and a session band called I Quelli decided to stop backing pop singers and become something else entirely. 'Impressioni di settembre' carries one of the first prominent Moog parts on an Italian record, played by Flavio Premoli when the instrument was still a rarity there. Mauro Pagani's flute and violin are what separate this from its British models. Manticore signed them next.

Two brothers on keyboards, Vittorio and Gianni Nocenzi, and a singer, Francesco Di Giacomo, who sounded like an opera house falling over. A concept record about evolution, from primordial soup to a fairly bleak view of human history. 'L'evoluzione' opens it and runs a quarter of an hour. Spotify tags that track Live by mistake — it is the studio take, runtime intact.

The band took their name from a road sign on the A1 heading out of London. Dave Stewart's keyboards, Richard Sinclair's voice, the Northettes floating wordlessly behind everything, and Jimmy Hastings on woodwind — the same guest who turns up on the Caravan record further down. 'Fitter Stoke Has A Bath' is the way in. Jonathan Coe borrowed the title for a novel.

Brecht is the whole argument here — the title comes from one of his poems, and Dagmar Krause delivers the words like someone addressing a rally rather than an audience. 'Living in the Heart of the Beast' runs fifteen minutes and is Tim Hodgkinson's bluntest political statement. Henry Cow went on to convene Rock in Opposition, which is how Univers Zero ends up further down this list.

Dave Sinclair left after the sessions, and his fuzz organ across the twenty-two-minute 'Nine Feet Underground' is the best thing he ever recorded. The album sold nothing on release and is now the record people mean when they say Canterbury: jazz chords, English whimsy, a Tolkien-ish cover painted by Anne Marie Anderson. Pye Hastings' brother plays the flute.

Camel had just made an entirely instrumental record about a goose, so this one at least has singing on it. The four main pieces were loosely written as portraits of the four band members, and it is the last with the original quartet — Doug Ferguson left after the tour. 'Lunar Sea' closes it, Peter Bardens' Moog set against Andrew Latimer's guitar.

Side one is an eighteen-minute conclusion to a story begun on the previous album, and the band tracked it before settling the vocal key, which left Geddy Lee singing at the absolute top of his range. They never wrote that way again. 'La Villa Strangiato' is subtitled An Exercise in Self-Indulgence and reportedly took longer to record than their entire debut.

Bassoon, oboe, violin, viola, harmonium: Daniel Denis built a rock band out of chamber instruments and pointed it at Bartók rather than the Beatles. 'La faulx' means the scythe, runs twenty-five minutes, and has its French vocals whispered rather than sung. It is the coldest thing on this list. Streaming dates it 2014 and appends a fourth piece; the original is three.

A double album about the Book of Revelation, shelved for roughly two years by a label that found it alarming, by which point the band had effectively split. Vangelis wrote the music and Irene Papas chants over percussion on one track in a performance that explains most of the delay. 'The Four Horsemen' is the accessible one. Demis Roussos plays bass and sings.

Goblin made their name scoring Dario Argento, and this is the odd one out: a standalone studio album with no film attached, made between Profondo Rosso and Suspiria. Freed from picture they lean hard into fusion, and 'Snip-Snap' is where that shows most clearly. Cinevox released it in 1976. The band had started life under the name Cherry Five.