condition (record/cover):  NM / VG+ (2" sticker removal damage on back, edges wear, cut-out)

Released 1981 on the American Passport label (PB 6006), 1984 is Anthony Phillips' departure from the pastoral acoustic-guitar work that had made his name. Phillips, the original Genesis guitarist who left the band in 1970 (replaced by Steve Hackett) and went on to record a long, quiet catalog of folk-classical solo albums starting with The Geese & The Ghost in 1977, here turns to dystopian electronic music.

The album was conceived as a programmatic response to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, with each piece keyed to an aspect of the novel: surveillance, Newspeak, Room 101, the Two Minutes Hate. The instrumentation is almost entirely electronic: layered Polymoog and Roland synthesisers, drum machines, sequenced bass lines, treated guitar. Phillips plays everything himself, with occasional guest contributions from former Genesis colleague Mike Rutherford on bass. The pieces flow into one another across two sides, building toward a long final track that closes the album in something close to ambient territory. The whole record sits much closer to Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze than to anything in Phillips' usual catalog.

The original vintage Passport Records US pressing on PB 6006, with the dystopian cityscape cover. 1984 is one of the most overlooked records in the entire Genesis-extended-family catalog: an electronic-instrumental concept album from the most pastoral of all the Genesis alumni.