I was excited about this album when it came out. Partly because it came in the wake of the fantastic Man with the Golden Arm, and partly because the whole "fake film soundtrack" idea was new then (with the possible exception of Eno's Music for Films). Over the next decade it started cropping up in lots of places: Sabres of Paradise, David Holmes, Third Eye Foundation and The Passengers. All of whom, except The Passengers, seem to owe a debt to Adamson and Moss Side Story in particular.
Twenty three years later, the exercise seems, if not a dead end, then still somehow to have promised more than it delivered. There's one track, The Swinging Detective, that has some of the energy of Man with the Golden Arm, but much of the rest goes by in a bit of a blur — much like a real soundtrack album, in fact.
<nitpick>I take issue with the Wikipedia contributor's assessement that "The overall style is reminiscent of the work of Angelo Badalamenti who often collaborates with the film director David Lynch," particularly as it seems to imply some influence from Badalamenti to Adamson. Badalamenti had only done one Lynch soundtrack (Blue Velvet) at the time of Moss Side Story's release, and what was later to emerge as his trademark style was far from clear at this stage. The textural elements of MSS seem to bear the fingerprints of Mute engineer Paul Kendall (a regular on these pages, most recently as producer of the Ut album) more than Badalamenti. Adamson and Badalamenti both contributed to the soundtrack of David Lynch's Lost Highway, so there was a connection later, but to infer an earlier influence seems like a projection of hindsight.</nitpick>
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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