Bashung ‘Play Blessures’ (Philips, 1982)

Fittingly for an album called ‘The Sitting Room’, I first came across Anne Clark’s debut long-player from 1982 while sitting in the living room of a friend-of-a-friend’s flat in Berlin last summer

Imagine a time when, as a concession to your audience, you’d show them cartoons while you were busy repatching your synthesisers between songs.

“Long, long ago, far into the distant future and after the seventh war, there is a civilisation called System 605. Where the diseases of love and emotion no longer exist to complicate our busy lives…”

I heard rumours of this album’s existence – originally released privately as ‘Canaxis 5’ in 1969 and credited to Technical Space Composer’s Crew – in the days before the internet.

“I was on the phone with [redacted] from Sonic Youth… ”

Say what you will about the rise of algorithms, but on occasion they do get it right.