A Walk Across the Rooftops

Recorded over five months in 1983 with Calum Malcolm engineering and Nigel Thomas on drums, on a budget from Linn of between ten and twenty thousand pounds. The band rehearsed it through one Marshall cabinet and a borrowed amp, abandoned drum-machine experiments, and synced each drum part by hand. They lived in a rented Edinburgh flat and then on Malcolm's floor. Buchanan said there was no producer and no A&R person, and the first pressing was 2,000 copies.

Sounds gave it five stars, Smash Hits put it in a league of its own, and Spin found it inert. It reached 80 in the UK, later went silver, and appears in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Moore told Pitchfork the band never recovered from it.