Best prog playlists?

The only time I have ever listened to playlists, or made my own, has been as part of a “game”. For instance, last year I participated in a “secret Santa” type playlist swap, where all the participants put in three words to “help” whoever was making out playlist decide on what to include.

The person for whom I made a playlist gave me the words, Space, Ambient, Robots.

I made this playlist for him:

The words I gave were Heavy, Jazzy, Weird, and this is the playlist I received:

The first round was so successful, and everyone had a lot of fun (and we pretty much ended up listening to all the playlists), that a second round was begun. This time, to make it even harder, instead of words, we had to provide a photo or picture that we thought might “help” whoever was creating our playlists.

I was given a photo montage of a moon cycle, which in my mind at the time reminded me of the eternal cycle of life and death, so I came up with this playlist:

I sent through a picture of the Earth being blown to smithereens. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, based on that. What I got was:

The point of all this, is that none of the people who played the game probably got what they were expecting, or even wanting. I think we all ended up listening to things very different from what we expected, and often outside our comfort zone. For me, that’s the best kind of playlist. I can’t really understand wanting to listen to a playlist of music I already know I will like, because I would rather just listen to the albums. I’m really not a shuffle sort of guy. I like to hear an album from beginning to end.

That said, the playlist swaps were a lot of fun, so perhaps we could do a similar thing through this forum? Just a thought....