I recently had the experience of listening to hundreds of new albums in a slightly disassociated context; many times I knew nothing about who the artists were or what style of music they were supposedly playing. Removing any of these preconceptions can be a liberating moment, and I found myself getting into lots of interesting groups I might not have stumbled across otherwise. The funny thing is that if some of these albums had been contextualized – like by theoretical genre, popularity, or even where they originated from – I might have passed on listening to many of them. Stripping away all of this "other" information helped clear the way for me to really hear the music.