A truly evocative and extraordinarily skilled instrumental album by the Wales-born steel string folk guitarist and banjoist whose finger-picking weaves intricate aural stories inspired by tales from occult folk horror, space, science fiction, and the tangled undergrowth of various landscapes. Her main influences are the music of Mississippi and Appalachian mountains, goth-Americana, Skip James, John Fahey, Roscoe Holcomb and John Hurt, but she’s surely also entered the pantheon among these key and revered figures, especially another release such as this. There’s a mixture of fabulous chaos and order in her playing, multiple melodies intertwining at once, pulling in different directions then coming back into line with a mind-boggling talent for control as well as an ear for toe-tapping catchiness. It sounds like she has 25 fingers and thumbs, not five. For subject matter and inspiration, one point of reference is Tom O’Bedlam, an insane homeless mystic from Grant Morrison’s comic book series The Invisibles who sees holy words in street signs reflected from the city’s wet concrete, hidden meanings within the modern chaos. “The world seems to have been taking on an increasingly surrealistic tilt,” says Raymond, “and ol’ Tom makes more and more sense.” Jack Parsons Blues references the chemist, rocket engineer and sometime occultist who died in 1952 of and accidental explosion in his home laboratory. So then comes a colourful mixture of oddities to inspire the music for this third LP, including pulp sci-fi and fantasy books found in her hometown of Brighton market. The music itself then conjures up images and emotions, from the drone and rich tones of opener Banjo Players of Aleph One, the aforementioned Jack Parsons Blues, the fabulous gradual build of Champion Ivy, the beautiful elegiac and traditional traditional Bliws Afon Tâf, the sparky Bonfire of the Billionaires, the gentle see-saw bluesy feel of the title track before another frenzied tumble of fast notes, then undulating to a walk pace again, Cattywomp’s wonderful wobbly bluegrass, the pensive melancholy of Bleak Night In Rabbit’s Wood, or the UFO-on-a-prairie-at-night feel of the closer One Day You'll Lie Here But Everything Will Have Changed. A transportive, sensational talent in full flow and so good its slightly surreal. Out on We Are Busy Bodies.
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