Robert Wyatt - Old Rottenhat

Like hearing Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds or Steve Reich's 18 Musicians for the first time, Robert Wyatt's most moving and fully realised album takes your breath away with its beauty and grace. A marriage of stark simplicity and beguiling subtleties, Old Rottenhat is Wyatt's minimalist masterpiece. His melancholy voice and ethereal keyboards move from the overtly political "East Timor" and "United States of Amnesia" to the plaintively personal "P.L.A. (Poor Little Alfie)," an ode to Wyatt's wife that conveys more in two lines than most songs manage in four verses. If you buy just one album by this former Soft Machine and Matching Mole frontman (hey, if you buy just one CD ever), this should do the trick