XTC Skylarking “Improper Sound Polarity”

After a friend mentioned XTC on Facebook the other day, I remembered how much I loved Skylarking and called it up on Spotify, and somehow it was even better than I remembered, and while I was listening to it looked it up online.

And came across the astounding bit of information that when Andy Partridge attempted to remaster the album a few years ago, his new mastering engineer, John Dent, told him that it had been recorded out of phase, and that they needed to reverse the polarity.

WTF?