It is something that is not often written about by album reviewers. With a bit of a stretch it may be like a card playing member of the magic circle sworn to secrecy for professional reasons, the analogy I am thinking of relates to how we listen. Well, everyone is different in their time devoting methods and choice of formats but I am sure few would argue that listening because of technology has changed hugely and not always for the distortingly better. For instance, we are teased before album release in a radically different way than pre-web, say experiencing the Tigran Hamasyan EP For Gyumri (Nonesuch) firstly via a video for Rays of Light, the second of the five tracks.
That was almost enough, a superb, ghostly sensation derived from Armenian folk traditions, the passage of time and glories of jazz hoving into view, an uneasy ancient calming conjured somehow seemingly but of course not without skill and artifice.
When MTV began music videos (Herbie Hancock was an early adopter) the visuals were mostly confined to TV and before satellite TV came to the UK and Ireland cable. Most people then only knew about albums via press ads and specialist very small circulation magazines so really the general public brain-dead on Top 40 music or a little better informed if they were clubbers knew nothing about what was going on to all intents and purposes.
If you come upon an album I would contend without having heard anything at all of it and sit down to listen to it in one long listen your experience will be different and probably better (because you will concentrate more) than piecemeal snacking or if you are into pop a paltry single no matter how much of a banger it is.
Ubiquity these days or as good as access to music via streaming, which means we are drowning in content, reveals everyone to think that they are a curator or critic and no one really knows anything because we are too frazzled or time poor. Having listened properly to the full EP now a few times my impressions are threefold without droning on: the first, well never mind the EP width or lack of feel the quality; who said you cannot whistle (gorgeously The American)?; and marvel or thrill to the still pianism and gnosticism of it all. Rating, out of a maximum of five stars based on levels of innovation, quality of musicianship, recorded sound, unique sense of artistry, originality and overall sense of completeness: ****