Cardiacs – On Land And In The Sea

When I was 14, my art teacher Nick Goodman held after school art classes at the local YMCA. The first class consisted of only Nick and myself. When I arrived he was listening to this really weird music and was drawing a version of the front cover which turned out to be On Land And In The Sea. I was hooked immediately. The world presented in these weird proggy psychedelic songs spoke of a strange grey English landscape of suburban surrealism - of mum and dad, home, birth, death and flowers. The cover featured a group of what I thought at the time to be a bunch of really ugly people, dressed in tatty suit jackets with pasty white skin. In the background is a photo of a bare tree surrounded by a fresh sprouting of daffodils taken on a dull day in what looks like early English Spring. All of this really resonated and spoke to me, as I sat in my own grey suburban world pouring over art books of Max Ernst and listening to these new found vistas.