On Land and in the Sea is the second studio album proper by the English rock band Cardiacs. Produced by band leader Tim Smith, it was recorded and mixed in 1988 at The Slaughterhouse studios in Yorkshire and released in May 1989 by the band's label Alphabet Business Concern. The record features a complex sound, with songs moving through rapid shifts in tempo and key, as well as more experimentation with song structures than the group's previous album. Critics have described the record as art rock and pop in style. It was their final album with their "classic" six-piece line-up.
Promoted by the single "Baby Heart Dirt", On Land and in the Sea received mixed reviews from music critics, although attracted more favourable notices than the group's previous work. Many Cardiacs fans consider it the band's best album. The album also turned future Cardiacs member Kavus Torabi onto the group. The album was re-released in 1995 and 2007 after the album fell out-of-print.
Recording and composition
Momentum for On Land and in the Sea, Cardiacs' fifth album and second widely-distributed release, was built by the mild success of the group's previous album, A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window (1988), and its single "Is This the Life?", which was the group's only appearance on the UK Singles Chart, reaching number 80. The album was recorded and mixed at The Slaughterhouse, Yorkshire, between Summer and Autumn 1988, except "Horse Head" and "The Safety Bowl", which the liner notes describe as being recorded "in the hand" and "in the bush" respectively. It was the group's final album with the "classic" six-piece line-up, as William D. Drake, Tim Quy and Sarah Smith left the group after its release, leaving drummer Dominic Luckman with Tim Smith, the group's guitarist, vocalist and leader, and Jim Smith. Drake later said of the sessions: "I was in the studio the whole time and got to see how Tim was working. It was just great fun, lots of exploring and experimenting." The record was produced by Tim Smith and engineered by Graham Simmonds and Roger Tebbutt.
The album disregards typical musical elements, such as constant tempos, a regular time signature and definable keys, in favour of a chaotic art rock approach, although each song keeps a coherent structure. According to writer Nick Reed, "the music is more complex than most of what came out of big-deal prog groups like Yes, Genesis, and King Crimson, but it certainly doesn't feel that way on the surface. Compared to A Little Man, more songs on On Land and in the Sea have shifting tempos and moving parts, and the group experiment more with song structures, with several songs not breaking the two-minute mark while several other songs are longer. Some songs, such as "The Stench of Honey" and "Two Bites of Cherry", feature rapid, unpredictable shifts in tempo and metre and rely on staccato guitar chords as a musical anchor as opposed to drums. "Horsehead" opens with alternating male-female vocals, a psychedelic piano line and whirring beat, a section which lasts less than half a minute. "The Everso Closely Guarded Line", which largely stays in time but switches tempo at unexpected points, features an array of instrumentation and sounds including organ, strings, synthesiser, a xylophone-like percussive instrument and a baby's cry. The album's lyrics also feature a number of cut-and-paste quotes or paraphrases, including from the work of the nineteenth-century Irish poet George Darley (in the songs "Arnald" and "Mare's Nest").
Release
The release of On the Land and in the Sea was announced in the Cardiacs newsletter. The album was released by the band's own label Alphabet Business Concern (ABC) on 2 May 1989 on CD, LP and cassette formats, although was able to be pre-ordered from ABC before that date, and was preceded by the single "Baby Heart Dirt" released on 10 April in seven-inch and twelve-inch formats. All releases were distributed by Pinnacle. Cardiacs' newsletter also offered a signed copy of the album to recipients sending "a morally uplifting motto or proverb" in fewer than nine words. Dutch record label Torso released the album on CD with the inclusion of five extra tracks. Cardiacs premiered most of the album's songs at a gig in Scunthorpe, having rehearsed intensely for five days. Their subsequent performance at the Salisbury Arts Centre in 1990 was released as the film Maresnest. The band's catalogue had become out-of-print by the mid-1990s, leading ABC to reissue all the group's albums, including On Land and in the Sea, on CD in May 1995. The ABC edition was re-pressed in 2007, and is currently available on the band's Bandcamp page.