Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk

After painstakingly trying to recreate the largely improvised music of the smash hit album The Colour of Spring in concerts, Mark Hollis and Tim Friese-Greene of Talk Talk decided to just give up on touring altogether and create the album they were aiming for all the time. Loose sketches of songs were recorded with drums, guitars and a bit of bass. Then they invited an army of guest musicians to improvise upon the tracks for hours on end. The musicians were given no direction whatsoever, they were free to play whatever they felt like, the only rule was to try and not play the same thing twice. Then after that Hollis and Friese-Greene spent months editing down the material. Some musicians played for hours, while only seconds of their contributions made it on to the record, and some contributors never even made it on to the album.

The result was one of the finest and most unique albums ever created, where every piece of music is improvised, and later carefully orchestrated with digital editing. It inspired a whole genre (post rock) and countless bands from Catherine Wheel to Tortoise. Radiohead obviously took notice, although they are careful to never mention Talk Talk as an inspiration.

The funny thing is, the digitalization of sound, which made this music possible (it would've taken decades if you were to do the editing with tape), also made file sharing possible,which later took all the big money out of the music industry, assuring no one would ever afford to make music this way again, unless bankrolled by someone wealthy.