Before and After Science by Brian Eno

Before and After Science, Brian Eno's fifth solo studio album, came out on Polydor in the UK in December 1977, with Island handling America soon after, and it's the last time the one-time Roxy Music keyboard man made a rock record of his own that decade. Eno produced it with Rhett Davies, drawing on a guest list that reads like a who's who of art rock on both sides of the Channel and the Rhine: Robert Wyatt, Fred Frith, Phil Collins, Phil Manzanera, Jaki Liebezeit, Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius among them.

He wrote a huge pile of tracks and kept just 10. At one end it twitches and jabs with nervy, angular energy; at the other, mostly on side two, it drifts off into hazy, pastoral calm, pointing the way to the ambient music that would take over his work. "King's Lead Hat", an anagram of Talking Heads, the band he'd go on to produce, was remixed for a single, and critics still count the album among his finest.

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