Moss Side Story by Barry Adamson

Moss Side Story is the debut album of British musician Barry Adamson released in 1989. The album is a concept album, a soundtrack album to a non-existent crime film. The music is almost completely instrumental except for occasional screams, vocal samples and a choir. To achieve the soundtrack effect, the song titles are descriptive of a film noir plot outline. The inner sleeve came with a short story written by Dave Graney which added to the concept. This complemented outer sleeve which displays the tag line: "In a black and white world, murder brings a touch of colour...". In a 2017 interview, Adamson reported that he recorded Moss Side Story due to his fascination with film music and as "a calling card [to] send it around to people" in hopes of being hired to write music for actual films. The overall style is reminiscent of the work of Angelo Badalamenti who often collaborates with the film director David Lynch. Adamson would go on to contribute music to Lynch's film Lost Highway (1997) Moss Side is a neighbourhood in the city of Manchester, Great Britain, where Adamson was born. The album title is a play on words and a reference to Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. The title of "The Swinging Detective" plays on Dennis Potter's series of television plays The Singing Detective, while "Round Up The Usual Suspects" is a line made famous by Claude Rains in Casablanca.