Despite their (early on, at least), reputation for weirdness and freakery, Pink Floyd's individual members all had fairly straightforward and mainstream musical tastes. Except for drummer/motor racing nut Nick Mason. The affable Mason, whose hero was (and remains) the great Chico Hamilton, also had a liking for the avant-garde and some of the more outré fringes of jazz. Fictitious Sports, the drummer's first solo album, released in May 1981, is a perfect illustration of both Mason's broad tastes, and of his generosity.

It's essentially a Carla Bley album – she wrote all the material, played keyboards and co-produced with Mason – that the famous drummer put his name to, in the hope that her work (of which he was a fan) might reach a wider audience. Although it was a slow-seller compared to the Floyd's trillion-selling mega-albums, it may well be the biggest commercial hit of Bley's singular career.

The songs, recorded in New York in 1979 (doubtless these sessions were a welcome break for Mason, who was recording The Wall at the time with Pink Floyd – by all accounts, a tough time for everyone in the band), emerged from rehearsals Bley led for a rock-focused new band called Penny Cillin & The Burning Sensation, and they tapped directly into the late-1970s zeitgeist. Bley buffs may thus find it more rocky and Floydian-sounding (Mason's distinctive ‘lolloping’ drum style is present and correct, while session guitar wiz Spedding does a very good Dave Gilmour impersonation) than they’re used to, but it's a very satisfying album. Lyrically, it is full of mordant wit, and Mason's old mate Robert Wyatt's lugubrious tones are the perfect channel for Bley's writing on songs such as ‘I Was Wrong’ and the punning, double entendre-laden ‘I’m A Mineralist’.

“If there's such a thing as punk-jazz, this is it,” The New York Times said at the time. Bley soon moved on from this music, and it remains a brief, strange interlude in her extraordinary musical life. But among Pink Floyd member solo albums, it's up there with the very best.