Dream pop and the production approach of treating the whole record as a single continuous experience is something that distinguishes the albums I love most.

Most albums are collections of songs. The best dream pop albums are something more unified — sequences where each track's relationship to the tracks that surround it is as compositionally considered as the internal composition of the track itself. The transitions, the sequencing, the overall emotional arc from beginning to end.

This is a different relationship to the album as a format than most music uses. It's closer to how a film score works — where each cue is compositionally related to what comes before and after — than to how a typical rock album works.

The implication for listening is that dream pop albums reward the single complete listen more than almost any other genre. The experience is different from hearing the tracks in any other order, and the album as a whole creates an emotional arc that individual tracks don't independently produce.