The Flying Lizards - Fourth Wall (Virgin, 1981)

For my money, the best of their albums (we won't count "Secret Dub Life", which is pretty great, too). I was reminded of it on picking up the first Michael Nyman Band album at Amoeba today and noticing that "Hands 2 Take", one of my favorite songs here, is built out of edits of Nyman's "Bird List Song". Nice!

 The weird pop of the S/T album is here (the hooks of tracks like "Move on Up" and the title track can't be denied), but what takes the cake are David Cunningham's forays into instrumental synth/tape music, like "Cirrus" with its vocal loops or the incomparable "New Voice". I wish I could find more of this stuff - maybe one day a vault will open with tons of his unreleased solo work. I can dream, can't I?

Enjoy it here