But it was the kiss that caught his attention the most a fusion of two worlds. The same goes for its cover art, one of many paintings Alice Sfintesco sent Pätzold, who had been a fan of her work for years. Chronos, his first full-length since 2011’s Minds, journeys towards the abstract but is deeply evocative in its plaintive melancholy. Check out the list below.Īs Secret of Elements, German composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Johann Pätzold makes music that straddles the line between modern classical and ambient electronica. And to offer more insight into the process and concept behind these covers, we reached out to many of the artists featured for a written statement, or have included quotes from interviews or press materials relating to the artwork. When we did the same list last year, only the Top 10 covers were accompanied by a blurb this time, all 50 entries come with a short description. But they all, in different ways, have struck just the right mood or shaped our experience of an album.

This is a roughly ranked list, but some of the albums have been placed in close proximity purely because of their aesthetic or symbolic similarities rather than any objective criteria. To kick off our year-end coverage, we thought it fitting to highlight the album covers that have not only introduced us to new music, but also kept these albums in our memory long enough for list season. People often talk about album covers as points of entry, but they are also a means of remembering – a way of revisiting the world of an album with a single glance.

A space in time album cover