What a Roxy Music listener is loyal to is rarely the songs alone. It is a collision: a crooner and a synthesiser given equal billing, a treated guitar used as colour rather than riff, a sleeve and a tape effect handled as parts of one job. Almost nobody else in British pop was attempting that in 1972, and the people who built it did not stay put. This guide to the best prog rock albums for Roxy Music fans follows where they went and names six records, none by Roxy Music, since the band already has its own pages here. Every choice is attached to the group by something documented: a founder who left, a guitarist’s earlier band, a shared label and sleeve team, a player recruited out of another line-up.

Brian Eno — Another Green World (1975)

The shortest bridge here. This is the work of the synthesiser player who co-founded Roxy Music and left in 1973, credited there for synthesiser and tape effects rather than for conventional playing. Recorded at Island Studios in Notting Hill and issued on Island, it is where he stopped writing for a group and started building small self-contained worlds: fourteen pieces, five with vocals and the rest wordless. AllMusic, quoted in the album’s standard reference entry, calls it a universally acknowledged masterpiece; Pitchfork ranked it tenth among the albums of its decade.

Quiet Sun — Mainstream (1975)

Roxy Music’s guitarist had a band before Roxy Music, and this is it. Quiet Sun broke up in 1972, the year he joined the more famous group, and stayed broken until studio time booked in London for his own solo album was stretched to cover a second: the band reconvened at Island Studios in January 1975 and cut an LP of its old material, released on Island that year. It sits at the Canterbury end of British art rock rather than near Roxy’s glamour, which is the point: it shows what one member brought in. The New Musical Express made it album of the month, and three of its pieces were reworked for the live album he later made with Roxy Music’s former synthesiser player.

Sparks — Kimono My House (1974)

Not a personnel bridge but an institutional one. The band moved to England in 1973, signed to Island — Roxy Music’s label — recruited a British guitarist, bassist and drummer, cut the record across four London studios, and had its sleeve made by the team behind Roxy Music’s early covers: the same marketing director, the same photographer, the same stylist. It reached number 4 on the Official Albums Chart, and the New Musical Express called it an instant classic.

Curved Air — Air Conditioning (1970)

Here the traffic runs the other way: Roxy Music went shopping in this band. The debut appeared on Warner Bros. as the first picture disc album pressed for a rock group, a limited run of 10,000 copies with the art set into the vinyl itself, and it reached number 8 on the Official Albums Chart. Less than three years later the violinist and keyboard player who had joined after this record was recruited away to replace Roxy Music’s departing synthesiser player; the player heard here on organ, harpsichord and VCS3 later turned up in the live band the Roxy guitarist assembled with that same former synthesist. Prog, reviewing the remastered edition, singled out the classically-charged arrangements.

David Bowie — Low (1977)

Two links, both on the record. The first is an accident of scheduling: Roxy Music’s debut and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars came out on the same day, 16 June 1972. The second is a person — the synthesiser player who co-founded Roxy Music is credited as a performer across almost every track, on keyboards, synthesisers, guitar treatments and voice, though the album’s standard account is emphatic that he was not its producer. Issued on RCA, it reached number 2 on the Official Albums Chart, and its second side gives way to long, largely wordless pieces. Pitchfork named it the greatest album of the 1970s.

Talking Heads — Remain in Light (1980)

The furthest from Roxy Music in sound, and still a real bridge: that same founding synthesiser player is on it as a performer — keyboards, guitars, bass, percussion, backing vocals — seven years after leaving the band that made his name. Recorded at Compass Point in Nassau and Sigma Sound in New York and released on Sire, it was assembled the hard way: the group played long instrumental jams, isolated the best fragments, learned to repeat them, and built the songs by stacking loops rather than writing verses and choruses. It reached number 21 on the Official Albums Chart, and Pitchfork later ranked it second among the albums of the 1980s.

Where to start

Kimono My House first: the nearest neighbour to Roxy Music’s own sound, made for the same label at almost the same time, and it asks nothing of you. Low next, the record most listeners already half-know, with the strangeness saved for side two. Another Green World after that, the same instincts with the songs mostly removed. Remain in Light is the longest reach in style but not in difficulty. Air Conditioning is the period piece, built around electric violin and keyboards. Mainstream belongs last: the least immediate thing here, and the clearest picture of what one member was doing before he walked into the band you already love.

Go deeper

The site carries most of these trails onward. The two departing members whose records open the list have guides of their own — the one for Brian Eno listeners and the one for David Bowie listeners — and the guitarist’s pre-Roxy band has a page to itself. Curved Air gets both a beginner’s guide and its own recommendations page. The map for the whole series is Prog Rock Recommendations: What to Listen to Next.

Back the other way, towards the band that sent you here, the beginner’s guide to the essential Roxy Music records sorts the catalogue era by era and the band page gathers the rest. Neighbouring guides run the same method from other starting points: Supertramp and Electric Light Orchestra, and the wider canon these records sit inside is at The Best Progressive Rock Albums of All Time. A book-length account of the British scene, Beyond the Thames, in the Beyond the Sound series, covers the same ground at greater length.

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