The 1968 album Cat Stevens hailed as a thing of “perfect beauty”

Cat Stevens singled out Wendy Carlos’s 1968 album *Switched-On Bach* as a work of “perfect beauty”, praising how it combines Bach’s classical music with electronic synthesisers. The record’s blend of tradition and new technology reflects Stevens’s own interest in joining musical worlds, and helps explain why it remained a lasting favourite.

Stevens said in a 2017 interview that he would find it hard to leave the album behind on a desert island. He admired Carlos’s reworking of classical composers, including her music for *A Clockwork Orange*, and saw the approach as opening “a totally new world”. The article also connects that experimental spirit to Stevens’s 1977 album *Izitso*, released during a period of major personal change as he converted to Islam.