When adding albums to your streaming collections costs a few seconds, and life involves less free time than it did when you were twenty, it’s easy to lose touch with music. It just doesn’t feel as meaningful. You neglect old loves and fail to find new ones — maybe not entirely, but as a general rule. That’s how it felt to me, and that’s why I started this CD project.

I chose a random CD from my physical music collection. I listened to it a bunch of times, sometimes in the background, sometimes with attention, until I was once again truly familiar with in. I did not listen to anything else. Then, second CD. Same thing. Until I had refamiliarised myself with it, I could only listen those two albums. Then, I added a third. And so on. It’s as if I’m building up my music collection entirely anew. It’s a lot of fun, and makes me more involved with music than I’ve been for years. After a few albums I already knew, I also started adding new ones. Here’s the collection so far:

1. Nightwish, Oceanborn (1999). Symphonic metal, power metal. I remember hearing two songs from this album on the only metal programme on the Dutch radio back in the later 90s, 120 Watt, and storming off to the record shop in Utrecht to get it. Among the first albums I had, so it has a lot of personal significance to me. It holds up pretty well! Nightwish is really good at bringing the metal guitars, the keyboards, and Tarja’s operatic vocals together without getting too far into bombast and kitsch. Highlights: Stargazers, Gethsemane, The Pharaoh Sails to Orion.
2. Radiohead, Kid A (2000). Post-rock, ambient, electronic. This was never the Radiohead record that was closest to me: I believe is got The Bends first, then OK Computer, and then Amnesiac. While Kid A didn’t sound inferior to me, it didn’t have songs that grabbed me as much as Paranoid Android or Life in a Glass House. Listening to it now with the attention it deserves, I appreciate the music very much. I still don’t feel much of an emotional connection, but I’m glad to put it up for the sheer strange beauty. Highlight: The National Anthem.
3. VNV Nation, Electric Sun (2023). Futurepop. VNV Nation are among the bands I’ve listened to most in my life. I find it hard to assess them in terms of quality; many of their songs just hit me. The beats, the cosmic voids, the emotion, the absolute refusal of cynicism. Electric Sun is not a surprising album, but it is a very fine one. There’s menace, there’s hope, there’s despair, there’s wherewithal. It’s the sound of perseverance, except in a very different genre. The club hit is Prophet, but the great song of the album — on of their best on any album — is Wait.
4. Dream Theater, Metropolis Part 2: Scenes from a Memory (1999). Progressive metal. Over the years, I’ve bought many Dream Theater CDs. But why? They’re all good, maybe even excellent… but what do you get from eight Dream Theater CDs that you didn’t already get from three or four? I suppose the only way to find that out is to take the time to really sit down and listen to them all over again, or maybe for the first time. Metropolis Part 2 was never a clear favourite of mine, since the core story about a guy going into regression therapy and then reliving the memories of a woman who got killed in a family feud, which then somehow heals him and now he knows that ‘the spirit carries on’… let’s just say it’s not my thing. With a 2026 look, it’s also not a great look at femicide, describing a murder far too much as a tragic/romantic crime passionel. But, you know, at least they were trying to bring a certain seriousness and narrative capacity into metal, which was often lacking. And the music is often gorgeous. Guys at the top of their craft.
5. Covenant (aka The Kovenant), Nexus Polaris (1998). Black metal, melodic black metal. The lyrics were not written by a gifted poet, but the cosmic insanity on display here is certainly a breath of fresh air in black metal land. What’s more, it really fits the music. Strange harmonies, mad vocals, expanding soundscapes, and a lot of serious metal ugliness underneath — this is an album with its own voice, and one that I find easy to appreciate. “What a humble vision, to forever dwell by the grace of the sun!” Changed their name to The Kovenant when they went into a more electronic direction and started to sound like the other Covenant, of Call the Ships to Port-fame. I like their later stuff too, but that’s for another time. And it seems that they might be coming back together?
6. Lou Reed, Berlin (1973). Art rock, rock opera. Goth rock avant la lettre? This was a new album for me, given to me by my friend Frank. It’s great! Telling the story of two drug addicted lovers in, one supposes, Berlin, it manages to do some very economical and powerful storytelling. And it’s bleak. There’s more dependency than love here, and more violence than sex. Haunting music, haunting words. Shows what you can do when you dare be concrete. I also like the strangely warm instrumentation on some of the tracks — perhaps this is what Leonard Cohen was going for with the weird sound of Death of a Ladies’ Man, except that Reed succeeds. And how.
7. Paradise Lost, The Plague Within (2015). Death/doom metal, gothic metal. Newly bought. I’ve listened to and enjoyed earlier Paradise Lost, especially Draconian Times, and seen them live several times. This album is heavy. Slow, slugging, doom-laden. The lyrics are criminally bad: “No hope in sight. Daylight before them dies. Enshrine the horrified. No hope in sight. Have I prayed, as a slave of lasting cries, to obey, to sedate as humour dies.” Is that coherent English or just somebody stringing gloomy words together? The music is better, but often left me a bit bored. There are some interesting moments, and the overall atmosphere is solid, but I can’t get excited by this album. It doesn’t help that the grunts feel thin. It’s not bad per se, but I could easily have done without this ’14th studio album by Britain’s gothic doom metallers’ that ‘will surprise even the most seasoned of fans in its ambition’.