Tin Drum

Tin Drum is the fifth and final studio album by British new wave band Japan. It is their most commercially successful studio album, peaking at #12 on the UK albums chart. Following the departure of guitarist Rob Dean, Japan began to let more East Asian–particularly Chinese–influences seep into their music, and into Sylvian’s lyrics as well. The band started experimenting with all sorts of different Chinese-influenced synth and percussion sounds, as keyboardist Richard Barbieri recalled in 1994 to Sound on Sound:

We took such care over each individual sound that we got quite paranoid about all sounds being new and different. My big influence on that album was Stockhausen, especially the abstract electronic things he was doing in the late ‘50s. Listen to a track like “Ghosts”, for example, and you’ll hear all these metal-like sounds that hardly have a pitch, yet subconsciously suggest a melody.

The album was met with critical acclaim, gaining BBC Radio 6’s “Goldie Award” in 2011 for being the best album of 1981, and is widely considered to be the band’s best work.