10 Trippy Albums You MUST Hear Before You Die

This one might be a bit of stretch, as Kraftwerk’s 1974 album Autobahn is literally inspired by a (non drug induced) car trip across Germany’s federal motorways. At over twenty minutes, the album’s title track is a long, monotonous loop of electronic sounds, which features the generous use of phasing, in order to capture the feeling, noise and chaos of speeding along a busy motorway; the synthesised, robotic sounds in essence produce a trance-like effect on the listener.

Five years after the album’s release, the band’s record label tasked filmmaker and animator Roger Mainwood with producing a video to accompany the Autobahn single, though with no input from the band themselves. The animated short, which sees a blue, alien-like figure take a “repetitive and circular journey” through a futuristic landscape fraught with danger, was based on “psychedelic pop imagery”, and added to the trippy, cosmic nature of the song. Autobahn is regularly cited as a major influence on modern day techno, pop and hip-hop, and with its innovative, heavily synthesised sound, it’s easy to see why.