FM - Surveillance (1978) Full Album

All compositions by Cameron Hawkins, Martin Deller, Ben Mink, except as noted.

Side 1

"Rocket Roll"
"Orion"
"Horizons"
"Random Harvest"
"Shapes of Things" (Paul Samwell-Smith, Keith Relf, Jim McCarty)

Side 2

"Seventh Heaven"
"Father Time"
"Sofa Back" (Mink, B. Feldman)
"Destruction"

Cameron Hawkins – lead vocals, synthesizers, bass guitar, piano
Ben Mink – electric violin, electric mandolin, vocals
Martin Deller – drums, percussion

Recorded at Sounds Interchange, Toronto, Canada
Produced by Keith Whiting by arrangement with Jake Productions
Engineered by Mike Jones, assisted by Ed Stone
Synthesizers produced and programmed with the assistance of Larry Fast
Art direction: Murray Brenman
Front cover photo: Paul Till
Back cover and inner sleeve photos: John Herzog

Released 1979
Recorded Sounds Interchange, Toronto
Label Passport, Arista
Producer Keith Whiting

The album continues the space rock lyrical theme introduced on Black Noise; the opening track's chorus is a chant of "Sci-fi rock, rocket roll".

The group's first cover version appears on this album: "Shapes of Things", originally recorded by The Yardbirds in 1966. FM (and Nash the Slash) would frequently pay tribute to their favourite songs, mostly from the 1960s, in the years to come. This song was also issued as a single (Arista 0477 in the USA).

An unusual song on Surveillance is a mostly instrumental track titled "Sofa Back", which the group performed live without its brief vocoderized chant of "Moe, Larry, cheese", a quote from the Three Stooges short film "Horses' Collars", expecting the audience would not understand it. Much to the group's surprise, audiences usually chanted the phrase during performance. This song also has a copyright date of 1966, and is presumably an old composition of Mink's which he brought to the group.