It’s strange that an album that came from the same rain-drenched and unglamorous Manchester environs as Joy Division — and even sounds a little Joy Division at times — should become a soundtrack to sun-soaked psychedelic adventures for beautiful people in Ibiza, but such is the magic of the Balearic DJ ethos. Vini Reilly’s gently chiming guitars — echoing both New York minimalism and West African highlife — lyrical piano chords and bare drum (occasionally drum machine) patterns came to life in a new geographic and narcotic context — and this 1981 album is essential listening if you want to understand certain patterns that would be codified in explicitly Balearic records of the decades that followed.

– Joe Muggs

Following the Durutti Column’s remarkable debut, Vini Reilly made it an actual group thanks to the addition of Bruce Mitchell on drums and percussion, complementing the stark rhythm-box pulses of the original with a clipped, crisp sense of drive to match Reilly’s elegantly spare guitar creations. Reilly also began to add vocals for the first time, with soft semi-whispered murmurings with a yearning edge on “Sketch for Dawn (I)” and “Never Known.” It was his remarkable, carefully delivered turn on “The Missing Boy,” dedicated to Ian Curtis, that was key.

– Ned Raggett