Blond

Blond is the album Frank Ocean gave away to escape his Def Jam contract — XL sold the merchandise and visual album version, fulfilling the commercial obligations while Ocean released the music itself for free download. Richard Russell’s XL Recordings started in 1989 as a hardcore-rave label (The Prodigy were an early signing) and became, over the following three decades, the most artist-driven major-indie of the 21st century. Russell himself produced Gil Scott-Heron’s final album, I’m New Here (2010). XL is the label that proved being massive and being strange are not incompatible positions.

Blond and OK Computer are records that get treated as art objects — records people return to and find new things in, the kind of listening experience that the great electronic albums were built to sustain.