A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window (reissue, 1988)
THE ALPHABET BUSINESS CONCERN
9/10
A TERRIBLE beauty was born when the first official full-length Cardiacs album arrived in 1988. Still sounding arrestingly weird and gloriously wonky 35 years later, A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window remains an attention-grabbing explosion of crazy-paving mania, avant-punk surrealism and wildly promiscuous stylistic overload. There are so many ideas stuffed in here that famous fans like Blur, Radiohead, Napalm Death, Faith No More and neo-prog luminary Steven Wilson could all later cite Cardiacs as an inspiration without sounding remotely like each other.
Formed in London’salready spent a decade shaping themselves into a kind of living artwork before making . With their strikingly theatrical image and a pan-dimensional sound that combined punk aggression with prog-rock virtuosity, free-jazz skronk with brass-band pomp, orchestral psychedelia with warped sea shanties, the Kingston band were heroically unfashionable and critically derided in the late 1980s.
