The Rip - Stormed Port EP (1987)

Alastair Galbraith's skills were first showcased in the Rip, which released two EPs in the mid-1980s. The second, Stormed Port, is particularly fine, and features several elements that recur throughout Galbraith's subsequent recordings: a penchant for milking maximum emotional mileage out of a slow chord change; angular, almost modal, violin work (which accents several of the guitar-based songs quite nicely) and doubletracked vocals that give most of his tunes a beautiful ethereal quality.