Last week we featured the song "Lost Innocence," as performed by Mark E (aka Mark Robinson), and this week we feature the song as performed by it's writers.

Rather than set you down a path of long-winded Section 25 biographies, I've borrowed the following about this album from James Nice of LTM Records, which is where the CD version of this album (with 5 extra tracks) can be found:

The Key of Dreams was eventually released by Factory Benelux (FBN 14) in June 1982. Edited down from over five hours of SSRU [aka Singleton Street Rehearsal Unit] tapes, the nine slices of narcotic, modern psychedelia were relatively loose and unstructured, with titles such as "The Wheel" and "Sutra" hinting at an interest in Buddhism. "Sutra" provided a clear centrepiece, being a fifteen minute jam that evoked Pink Floyd's expanded live excursions on Ummagumma, or Can at their most hypnotic. As the Cassidy brothers explained to Sounds:

You can get into problems jamming, it can be a long ramble, but there's a lot to be said for it. It's got a bad name. It's just possible that these songs will give comfort to someone who's having a bad time. Whether or not it's got to do with drugs we don't know. We just see that in them. *

The album was awarded a five-star review by Sounds, while cult Washington DC band Unrest [actually "Mark E"] would later offer the supreme tribute by covering "There Was a Time" (as "Lost Innocence") on the Teenbeat label in 1989. The album also drew somewhat skewed praise from Dutch magazine Vinyl:

The strength of these very ordinary gloomy songs lies in their ability to convey subtleties of feeling with as few means as possible... The only apparent structure in the music is effected by frugal but syncopated drumbeats. Bass guitar and guitar provide mainly atmospheric smears of sound around this (the same applies to the isolated appearance of saxophone and piano) and the vocalist mouths his lyrics with every appearance of disgust. Provided that you are absolutely knackered or smashed this record will make an oppressive but lasting impression on you. **

Since free hallucinogenics were not distributed with the album, purchasers had to make do with the unused triple-fold posters left over from Always Now.

* Interview with Dave McCullough, Sounds (UK) 11.9.82
** Vinyl, 7.82 (review by Joost Niemoller)