Whirlpool

The liner notes date the recording to 1990. Patman has said the album was the end point of a couple of years of writing rather than a planned record. Much of it was cut on sixteen-track in a smaller studio in Rugby and then moved to twenty-four-track, with the drums recorded again. Manager Gerald Palmer paid for the early sessions and owns the rights to those unfinished versions, which Patman says were never meant to be heard. Robin Guthrie was brought in to help on a couple of tracks, John Fryer mixed, and the cat on the cover came from Marc Pechart, credited as Albert Tupelo.

It reached 23 on the UK albums chart and 2 on the independent chart. NME gave it eight out of ten and Select four out of five, and Ira Robbins of Trouser Press found it surprisingly cohesive. Cherry Red's 2006 reissue added seven tracks from the early EPs and printed the lyrics for the first time; some runs used a lossy master, and corrected copies carry TC2159 on the inner ring. Sony issued an expanded digital edition in 2010, and Music On Vinyl a marbled LP in February 2026.