Yesterday I heard some extraordinary music. I was sitting in my study with those jolly nice people from Haunted Skies, working on volume six of their massively Quixotic encyclopaedia of British UFOs.Partly because I always listen to music while I do anything, and partly because this intriguing little album had arrived in the post about a week ago, and I have just not had the time to listen to it, I put it on.
I had no idea what to expect. Was it going to be indie, folk, reggae, experimental sounds featuring a Bolivian nose flute?
It wasn't any of those, but the honest truth is that I am not sure that I know what it was. From the opening bars of the opening instrumental which sounds like The Shadows playing with the On-U soundsystem, (but then it doesn't sound like either of them) you are swept into a peculiar and intimate little world which makes perfect sense, but is completely impossible to describe.
Martin Stephenson sounds much the same as he usually does, and Helen? One moment she sounds like Julie Andrews, another like an English analogue of her out of Tarnation (Paula Frazer). In fact, although musically Tarnation is miles away from this quintessentially English record, it is bizarrely, the only analogue I can begin to provide. Both sets of musicians open a door to their own little world that sounds like nothing else in the omniverse. Both have roots in country music, with a heavy smattering of late 1950s stylisations, chunks of folk music, and slices of timeless pop.
It is relatively early on a sunday morning, so my critical faculties are not at their best yet. But one thing I can and do promise. You have not heard the last of this duo on these pages...
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