This album, the last studio album from this group, is their most complex. For their first two albums (Man or Monkey and Beauty and the Beast), they entered the studio with prepared texts and improvised the music. On their third album, Perfect Worlds, they preconceived the pieces ahead of time and did the final arrangements in the studio. Here, not just the pieces, but the album's "plot" and some of the texts were written by Chris Cutler in the summer of 1988, six months prior to recording and two years before the final mix was complete. The length of gestation and the attention to detail show in the finished product. There is a great deal more overdubbing and sampling than in any previous album, especially in the voices.
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Themes and texts recur in the first and third parts, providing a unity that makes this the group's most powerful album.
