Dreamland

Frame kept the core of the Stray band, with Paul Powell on bass and Gary Sanctuary on keyboards, and brought in Ryuichi Sakamoto as producer. They met at a club in Ibiza, and Frame had seen Sakamoto play the 1991 Festival of Japan at the Hammersmith Odeon. Sakamoto did not build from the drums up. He would often set up a percussive loop, have everything played in response to it, and then take the loop out. At his suggestion Frame sang lower and closer to the microphone. In 1999 Frame said it was more of a true collaboration than any other record, and that Sakamoto wanted a record like High Land, Hard Rain while he wanted one like Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence.

Frame said the songs came from places. Black Lucia grew out of the St Lucia festival in Stockholm. Vertigo came from Zurich and New York and references Captain Beefheart's Frownland. Spanish Horses was inspired by the Spanish group Ketama and sampled hand-claps and flamenco records under his guitar. Safe in Sorrow he called an Al Green shuffle. Sister Ann was about his friend Ann Adams, a nun who became a clinical therapist.

Most of the album was mixed by August 1992, but the label asked for one more song for a single, which became Dream Sweet Dreams. It came out on 17 May 1993 and reached 21 in the UK. The Independent called it "the most consistent album Roddy has made." In 2021 Rob Arcand of Pitchfork wrote that Frame "remains an intrepid lyricist unafraid to take his ballads into uncharted territory." The album restored Frame's popularity in Japan, where Sakamoto had a large following, and The Belle of the Ball became a theme song on the reality show Gachinko! Frame sang on Sakamoto's 1994 album Sweet Revenge.