I think I bought this one in the Folkestone branch of Our Price. I say I think, because it would either have been Our Price or Hummingbird Records, or possibly downstairs in Debenhams in the days when Debenhams still had a music department. But I think it was Our Price.

I don’t know why I wanted to buy this album, but I remember being very pleased that I did. As you’d expect from the Art of Noise, it’s not exactly at the “popular” end of the pop music slider. There was a single released, Dragnet, but it didn’t do very well in the chart and frankly is one of the weakest tracks.

Almost every other track, though, tingles your ears with sounds and effects. The rattling of keys, the beauty of a choir, a series of doors being closed. One song will hammer rhythm down your throat, the next is an adventure in quasi-ambient experimentation. There are moments of astonishing delight, and silly schoolboy humour (especially the use of sampled fart noises on one of the closing tracks). In bits, it’s daft. But listen to the whole thing, in one go: it drips genius.

I remember playing it to my dad in his car. He hated it, especially the song with the fart noises. He also said I’d been ripped off, because the whole album was repeated on both sides of the cassette. I pointed out that it wasn’t a rip-off; you still got the same 45-odd minutes of music that purchasers of the vinyl or CD version got. It just saved you the bother of turning the tape over. Dad wasn’t convinced, and tutted his way through to the end.