Back in the late ‘70s, The Lines dropped a slew of singles and a couple of albums, then seemed to disappear.

The London band had shared a stage with The Cure, Bauhaus and Birthday Party, but never received the shine they deserved, pre-empting an obsession with post-punk and primitive dance music, but languishing in obscurity.

Acute Records took steps to address the band’s legacy back in 2008, with anthology releases Flood Bank and Memory Span and now it continues the mission, finally releasing the band’s “lost” third album.

Although their supposed final release was 1983’s Ultramarine, The Lines continued recording, both at home and in William Orbit’s Guerilla Studios. Sadly, as the band drifted apart, the recordings were shelved and forgotten as singer Rico Conning took a job at Guerilla and ended up moving firmly into a career in engineering and remixing, working with Depeche Mode, Wire, Coil, Swans and others.

Acute has gone out of its way to “create a version of what might’ve been a third LP”, dusting off the original cassette sessions in the process. The result is an insight into a band that should be far more well known, showing prescient experiments with dub, electronics and electro that still sound urgent today.

Hull Down is set for release on May 13 via Acute Records.

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