Radio K.A.O.S. (1987) is the Roger Waters solo album that nobody considers significant — which makes it worth paying attention to here. Waters had been forced out of Pink Floyd the previous year. The record he made is built around a concept: a paraplegic Welsh boy named Billy who discovers he can pick up radio transmissions and eventually broadcast to the world.
The specific detail that connects it to acid house and rave is the pirate radio dimension. UK pirate radio was, in the mid-to-late ’80s, the infrastructure that built those scenes — unlicensed stations broadcasting from tower blocks, the only way the music reached people before the mainstream caught up. Waters was writing concept-album fiction about exactly the kind of pirate-radio explosion that gave rise to acid house and techno, at exactly the same moment it was happening. A prog-rock record about pirate radio, released in 1987, right alongside the music that pirate radio made possible.
Radio K.A.O.S. (1987) is the Roger Waters solo album that nobody considers significant — which makes it worth paying attention to here. Waters had been forced out of Pink Floyd the previous year. The record he made is built around a concept: a paraplegic Welsh boy named Billy who discovers he can pick up radio transmissions and eventually broadcast to the world.
The specific detail that connects it to acid house and rave is the pirate radio dimension. UK pirate radio was, in the mid-to-late ’80s, the infrastructure that built those scenes — unlicensed stations broadcasting from tower blocks, the only way the music reached people before the mainstream caught up. Waters was writing concept-album fiction about exactly the kind of pirate-radio explosion that gave rise to acid house and techno, at exactly the same moment it was happening. A prog-rock record about pirate radio, released in 1987, right alongside the music that pirate radio made possible.