50 Albums – The Pantheon / by Steve Peters

Sep. 30, 2025

I think all artists have a personal pantheon – a collection of works by other artists that have made us think differently about what we do and how we do it. Works that came to us at just the right moment when our creative personalities were being formed, and shaped our aesthetic sensibilities in ways that may or may not be apparent to anyone else. So here is mine.

These are not necessarily my favorite records by these artists or even things I still listen to, though some are. But they are all records that made a strong impression on me and in some way had an effect on my own work. I encountered most of them before I turned 30. Some of them obviously influenced certain pieces of mine, others had a feeling that resonated deeply and that I sought to emulate, or pointed the way to ideas that became important to me. Some would seem to have nothing at all to do with my own music, yet they possess qualities that I admire and carry with me as touchstones. They all blew my mind in some way and changed how I thought about music.

I've not included many song-oriented albums here because a) that would be a whole other list, and b) I haven't made anything like that in nearly forty years, and to be honest I was never very good at it. While a lot of that music may have shaped me as a person, it doesn't have much to do with "what I do" musically. So the records listed below are ones that relate to the music I've made in some way. I'll leave it up to you to figure out how it all fits together.

John Dowland (The Consort of Musicke) - Lachrimae 1604
Hamza el Din - Escalay (The Waterwheel)
Brian Eno - Another Green World (see also: Discreet Music and On Land)
Morton Feldman - Rothko Chapel / For Frank O’Hara
Fripp & Eno - Evening Star
Fred Frith - Guitar Solos
Harley Gaber - The Winds Rise in the North
Philip Glass - Music in Twelve Parts (Parts 1 & 2)
Golden Rain: Balinese Gamelan Music & Ketjak
Malcolm Goldstein - The Seasons: Vermont

Roscoe Holcomb - Close to Home
Jerry Hunt - Cantegral Segment(s)
Derek Jarman & Simon Fisher-Turner - Blue [Original Soundtrack]
Blind Willie Johnson - Praise God I’m Satisfied
King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King
Annea Lockwood - The Glass World
Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting in a Room (see also: Music on a Long Thin Wire)
David Lynch and Alan Splet - Eraserhead [Original Soundtrack]
Kohachiro Miyata - Shakuhachi: The Japanese Flute
Meredith Monk - Key (see also: Dolmen Music)

Terry Riley - A Rainbow in Curved Air (see also: In C and Persian Surgery Dervishes)
Arthur Russell - World of Echo
Erik Satie (Reinbert de Leeuw & Marjanne Kweksilber) - Mélodies / Hymne / Poèmes D’Amour / Ludions
Jan Steele & John Cage - Voices and Instruments
Studio der Frühen Musik - Chansons der Trouvères
Viet-Nam: Ca Tru and Quan Ho
Antonio Vivaldi (James Bowman) - Stabat Mater / Nisi Dominus / Concerto in G Minor
Hildegard Westerkamp - Transformations
Word of Mouth Chorus - Rivers of Delight
Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom