Tenants of the Lattice-Work was an album by synthpop

Synthpop

Synthpop is a genre of popular music that first became prominent in the 1980s, in which the synthesizer is the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic art rock, disco and particularly the "Kraut rock" of...

 band Mainframe

Mainframe (band)

Mainframe was an Electropop band from Hemel Hempstead, 26 miles north of London, England. Formed in 1982, it comprised two main members, unknown musicians Murray Munro and John Molloy . The former was already working with a new, small, independent record company named mc2 Music , also based...

, released in September 1983.

Consisting of fourteen untitled tracks, the album was created using a Roland Juno-60

Roland Juno-60

The Roland Juno-60 is a popular analogue 61-key polyphonic synthesizer produced by Roland Corporation in the early 1980s and a successor to the slightly earlier Juno-6. Like its predecessor, the Juno-60 has some digital enhancements, used only for clocking the oscillators and for saving and loading...

, Moog Liberation

Moog Liberation

The Moog Liberation was the first commercially produced keytar synthesizer released in 1980 by Moog Music. The instrument is comparable to the Moog Concertmate MG-1 and the Moog Rogue but it is most closely related to the Moog Prodigy; however, as a keytar the Liberation was designed to be played...

, Moog Prodigy

Moog Prodigy

The Moog Prodigy was a synthesizer produced by Moog Music from 1979 to 1984. Of the 11,000 produced, versions released after 1981 included a control voltage/gate input on the back that allowed the VCF of the filter to be triggered and controlled by an external source.These later versions began at...

, Yamaha

Yamaha (manufacturer)

is a multinational corporation and conglomerate based in Japan with a wide range of products and services, predominantly musical instruments, electronics, motorcycles and power sports equipment.-History:...

 SK20, Fender Stratocaster

Fender Stratocaster

The Fender Stratocaster, often referred to as "Strat", is a model of electric guitar designed by Leo Fender, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares in 1954, and manufactured continuously by the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation to the present. It is a double-cutaway guitar, with an extended top...

 and an Apple II

Apple II

The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...

 Microcomputer using a Greengate DS3 sound sampler card.

Tenants of the Lattice-Work was a concept album telling a story set in the future in which computer-generated environments allowed people to visit and relax in. Influenced by the success of Disney's movie Tron

Tron (film)

Tron is a 1982 American science fiction film written and directed by Steven Lisberger, and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It stars Jeff Bridges as the protagonist Kevin Flynn; Bruce Boxleitner in a dual role as security program Tron and Tron's "User", computer programmer Alan Bradley; Cindy...

, the main character was a computer-generated person who eventually managed to "escape" into the "real" world

There was a "quest" associated with the album: it was accompanied by two double-sided A4 sheets of paper containing a story and several questions. If you answered the questions correctly then you could claim the prize which was, apparently, a solid gold letter "M". Supposedly the answers to the questions could be worked out using clues that were in the printed story, the music, the complex front cover art work and the notes on the back of the album cover. There was also a videocassette which had to be purchased separately and contained additional clues to the questions. It is not known if the prize was ever claimed.

The album was issued as a vinyl long-play record (LP

LP album

The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

) by small, independent UK label mc² Music but was out-of-print by 1984, never to be re-released. A compact disc

Compact Disc

The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...

 version was never made available.

Contributors to the album included Colin Holgate, David Green and Graham Collins, drummer from John Molloy's former band, Don't Panic.

Today the LP

LP album

The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...

is difficult to find. Additionally the quality of the vinyl used by mc² appears to be poor as all pressings are afflicted by high levels of "surface" noise. (Clues to some of the competition questions were present in the quieter sections of the album but were difficult to discern because of this problem.) As such "mint-condition" copies of the LP should be considered as non-existent.

Track listing

1. " " - (untitled)
2. " " - (untitled)
3. " " - (untitled)
4. " " - (untitled)
5. " " - (untitled)
6. " " - (untitled)
7. " " - (untitled)
8. " " - (untitled)
9. " " - (untitled)
10. " " - (untitled)
11. " " - (untitled)
12. " " - (untitled)
13. " " - (untitled)
14. " " - (untitled)