Soul Mining

Johnson wrote much of it lying on his flat floor, he told The Quietus, using himself as a sequencer, with a Portastudio, an Omnichord and a TR-606. Zeke Manyika turned up three days late but gave that absolutely vicious drum sound; Johnson calls Paul Hardiman a first-rate engineer. The sleeve painting is by his brother Andrew Johnson. Wikipedia lists Jools Holland on piano on "Uncertain Smile", David Johansen on harmonica on "Perfect" (a track added to the US edition by an A&R man, which left Johnson livid), and contributions from Thomas Leer, JG Thirlwell and Martin McCarrick. It reached 27 in the UK and was certified gold in 2019; Metacritic scores the 2014 reissue 92. NME's Don Watson called it one of the year's rare heart-stopping moments, and Alexis Petridis in the Guardian a brilliant and very idiosyncratic album.