The Blue Nile: High

SOME TWENTY YEARS AGO Scottish electronics and hi-fi specialists Linn commissioned a local folk band to record a song for them, in order to demonstrate the sonic potential of a fancy new piece of equipment they had developed. So impressed were the people at Linn with the resulting song, a strange, floating piece of electronic folk, that they formed a record company in order to allow the band, who had previously struggled for attention, to record a full album. The resultant record, A Walk Across Rooftops, continued the strangeness of that first song, imparting a forlorn romanticism via odd, synthesized arrangements and Paul Buchanan's extraordinary, strained and straining voice.