Gentlemen Take Polaroids by Japan

Gentlemen Take Polaroids, the fourth studio album from Japan, came out on Virgin on 7 November 1980, and it's the sound of the Catford glam kids finishing the job of shedding their skin. The art rock, electronics and faraway influences have taken over, and the glam swagger of the early days has cooled into something elegant and remote.

David Sylvian sings like a man watching himself from across the room, Mick Karn's bass slithers and squirms, Steve Jansen's drums tick with fussy precision, and Richard Barbieri's keyboards hang in the air like cigarette smoke, with Rob Dean's guitar still in the frame. The title track glides along in chilly, poised synth-pop, while "Nightporter" drifts somewhere quieter and stranger still. It earned the band a gold record in the UK, a taste of the success that was only just arriving when they split at the end of 1982.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.