The Fall’s second release of 1988 is indeed a curious one: a soundtrack written to accompany a performance Michael Clark & Company, an avant-garde dance troupe known for their outlandish outfits (ass-revealing body suits and Heinz bean can costumes, for example) and modernist movements. Footage from the performances at the ’88 Edinburgh Festival revealed how well the two meshed up, if only because the band bent itself into some strange shapes for Clark and his dancers to work with. They tried their hand at reggae, musique concrete, glistening new wave, and gliding English folk.

With the theme of the piece being William III’s ascension to the throne, MES explored various theories and stray pieces of the historical record. He uses the rumor that William brought venereal disease into the nation as a platform to discuss the varying explanations for the AIDS crisis (“Van Plague?”), performs a piss-take on the English hymn “Jerusalem” as commentary on the struggles between Protestants and Catholics both in the king’s time and in modern-day Ireland, and on the title track further connects the wars of the past with then-current conflicts.

Ultimately, this album is a bit of an outlier to the group’s long timeline, an artistic excursion by the band into some untested waters. They don’t stray that far, of course, considering the album as gave us their brilliant “Hip Priest” rewrite, “New Big Prinz,” and the pure pop of “Cab It Up!” Yet, it feels less like a Fall album than anything before or after. The band was involved, recording under its name, but the intentions behind it put it at a remove.