doing Wasp Star after Apple Venus was definitely a mistake. It was originally supposed to be a double album, but they only got the budget to record one album so they picked the more expensive one to do first. A fair enough choice, but since it was almost entirely orchestral Dave Gregory got fed up with not doing anything and left. That didn't hurt the quality of Apple Venus much since the band members played so little on it, but it majorly hurt Wasp Star since his instrumental skills would have been perfectly suited for that record. Still, it came out pretty well, since the songs are so strong. even if it's not quite the swansong that Apple Venus (either the regular version or the imaginary double album version) would have been.

White Music was actually my intro to the band weirdly enough. So I'm pretty fond of it. Almost all of side 1 is aces. It's only like 35 minutes long or something though, so I don't think it really needs much trimming. It could have done without All Along The Watchtower though (I'd swap it with Science Friction from their debut EP).

Go 2 is a weird album. Definitely among their weakest. Seems like a pretty clear case of Sophomore Slump to me (it was released in the same year as White Music). Barry Andrews' songs are just werid and some of the experiments are interesting but not really all that good. Meccanik Dancing and the bonus Are You Receiving Me are both awesome songs though.

Yeah people don't always think about how early on in the new wave years XTC started. They were right on the forefront of that whole movement.