1974's Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) is a loose concept album with topics ranging from espionage to the Chinese Communist revolution. To help guide production of the album, Brian Eno and the album's cover artist Peter Schmidt developed the highly influential Oblique Strategies cards which proffered instructions intended to aid creativity. They were also used on subsequent albums and are still consulted by Eno and many others to this day. Unlike Here Come the Warm Jets Eno used fewer guest musicians here, instead opting for a core band consisting of Phil Manzanera, Andy Mackey, Brian Turrington and Freddie Smith of The Winkies, Robert Wyatt, Phil Collins of Genesis and Brand X, members of Randi & The Pyramids, The Simplistics and Portsmouth Sinfonia (an orchestra in which Eno had once played clarinet.)