Phaedra (Record Store Day 2020) vinyl

Tangerine Dream's sequencer-driven work may not feel quite so groundbreaking today, although it certainly has aged incredibly well. But you should take Phaedra, the first album entry in the band's back catalogue to fully realise that idea, as proof of the fact it was. Released in 1974, it's amazingly hard to distinguish between the opening title track and the synth arpeggiation you find in techno or ambient today, setting the bar for what is to follow.

In many ways you can trace so much of the last 30 years of dance music back to this era, if not this specific album, albeit it was light years ahead of its time. Perhaps what's most remarkable, though, is that far from crude noises that have since been refined for the more mainstream electronic world, much of what's here stands up to contemporary electronica in an exploratory, genre-melding, sound-art way. Basically, it's essential.