Martin Hannett & Steve Hopkins - The Invisible Girls (2015)

In many ways, The Invisible Girls was one of the more curious products of the Factory Records production line. Initially founded by legendary producer Martin Hannett and keyboardist Steve Hopkins in 1978 to provide backing tracks for poet John Cooper Clarke, they went on to release a number of singles with singer/songwriter Pauline Murray. Intriguingly, this first retrospective ignores their work with Clarke and Murray, instead focusing on largely unreleased experiments that touch on ambient, jazz, wayward electronics, Section 22 style post-punk darkness, and occasional forays into dub disco-influenced new wave noodling. It's a fascinating collection, and includes a suite of tracks ("All Sorts of Heroes") that brilliantly pitches Hopkins' jazz-influenced piano playing against Hannett's vivid imagination with predictably thrilling results.