It’s strange that an album that came from the same rain-drenched and unglamorous Manchester environs as Joy Division — and even sounds a little Joy Division at times — should become a soundtrack to sun-soaked psychedelic adventures for beautiful people in Ibiza, but such is the magic of the Balearic DJ ethos. Vini Reilly’s gently chiming guitars — echoing both New York minimalism and West African highlife — lyrical piano chords and bare drum (occasionally drum machine) patterns came to life in a new geographic and narcotic context — and this 1981 album is essential listening if you want to understand certain patterns that would be codified in explicitly Balearic records of the decades that followed.

Following the Durutti Column’s remarkable debut, Vini Reilly made it an actual group thanks to the addition of Bruce Mitchell on drums and percussion, complementing the stark rhythm-box pulses of the original with a clipped, crisp sense of drive to match Reilly’s elegantly spare guitar creations. Reilly also began to add vocals for the first time, with soft semi-whispered murmurings with a yearning edge on “Sketch for Dawn (I)” and “Never Known.” It was his remarkable, carefully delivered turn on “The Missing Boy,” dedicated to Ian Curtis, that was key.