A spread of sounds from the Second Language and Gare du Nord label families, Marisa Anderson and William Tyler, Blyth and Ghostwriter

As another blur of a year winds its way to autumn already, here comes a basket full of things picked from the review tree before the leaves pile up on the ground.

Although Second Language have resisted the temptation to assemble a further seasonally-centric selection, Holding Hands in the Dark – A Second Language Confluence covertly combines the respective autumn and winter moods of the label’s preceding Avenue with Trees and Drifts & Flurries compilations. On top of that, there is an even deeper and more overt exploration of pan-European cultural connections, to forge enlightening sounds for dark and strained times.

Contributions from returning 2L family members exude a quality control that is hearteningly high. Hence, 2L’s curator-in-chief Glen Johnson serves-up his own baroque-electro nugget “Alexandria” to hypnotic effect; D. Rothon offers up a gorgeous pastoral stargazing addendum to his recent Memories of Earth long-player on Clay Pipe; Franck Alba and Mark Fry both bring in exquisite guitar instrumentals in the corresponding shape of the electro-acoustic “Sketch for Albert” and the chamber-folk “Adiré”; Oliver Cherer extends the scope of the 80s bedsit melancholy from his I Feel Nothing Most Days LP into a lonely night time stroll across “Days on End”, underpinned by a charmingly wonky Bossa nova drum machine rhythm; and Mücha (AKA Amanda Butterworth) offers up an alluringly freshened-up take on the glitch and shimmer stylings of Piano Magic’s recently-2L-reissued Writers Without Homes LP with “Like It Is”, which bodes well for her imminent new album on Frequency Domain.

Elsewhere, the new-to-2L participants also deliver high-end goods. This includes Matthew Shaw’s hushed Tarwater-tinged “On Synchronicity”; the ethereal neo-classical encircling of “Secret Place” from Snowdrops; the majestic motorik art-pop of The Leaf Library’s “Agnes in the Square”; and Hilary Robinson’s elegiac Vashti Bunyan-imbued “(Is it) Morning or Evening?”.

Bolstered by a more abstract bonus disc – featuring an entrancing extended multi-movement instrumental and field recordings collaboration between Glen Johnson, David Rothon and Marc Nambland entitled “Le Bout Du Monde” – Holding Hands in the Dark is one more sublime Second Language compendium to get thoroughly lost inside.

As the third Thrill Jockey album released in relatively quick succession to be put together against the background of a tumultuous year and a half in Portland, Oregon – after Plankton Wat’s kaleidoscopic-psych odyssey Future Times and the blissed-out but pensive Americana glide of Rose City Band’s Earth Trip – Marisa Anderson and William Tyler’s Lost Futures seems the most hermetically sealed-off from its surroundings on initial plays. Yet these two equally gifted and well-travelled explorers, revered as solo artists and serial collaborators, clearly let some of their recording locale’s socio-political and environmental disturbances seep into these highly lyrical yet wordless conversational compositions.

Although centred primarily around the twosome’s electric and acoustic guitar interlacing, Lost Futures is also fleshed-out – but not cluttered by – the protagonists augmenting themselves with dulcimer, sitar, bass, piano, organ and more, whilst in scattered places Gisela Rodriguez Fernandez adds in violin and viola, Patricia Vázquez Gómez appends quijada and producer Tucker Martin provides drums and percussion.

The net results veer between the intimately pared-down and the subtly epic, as well as places in between. Along the way this incorporates seamlessly shifting through the ambient desert highway strains of “New Heaven”; the gentile unplugged voiceless duetting of the title track; the foreboding yet stirring wild prairie moods of “Pray for Rain”, the discordant dronescaping of “Something Will Come”; the dusty Morricone reveries of “At the End of the World”; and the twanging meandering languor of the closing “Haunted by Water”.

Evidently enthused but not overwhelmed by each other’s considerable talents, Lost Futures is a rich and flowing co-creation that actively encourages demands for a follow-up.

Whilst his equally accomplished predecessor on the Gallon Drunk drum stool, Max Décharné, took some of the band’s earlier rockabilly and retro rock ‘n’ roll leanings off to form and lead The Flaming Stars, the longer-serving Ian White extrapolates upon some of the now-dissolved-outfit’s more exotic and edge-pushing elements with his new ostensibly solo project Blyth.

Despite erstwhile bandmates James Johnston and Jeremy Cottingham supplying some piano and guitar parts in a few places, Confessions of a Justified Sinner (Clouds Hill) is very much White’s gritty and expansive conception. Built around his layers of live-played and looped drums, piano, synths and samples, the eight gathered tracks churn and sprawl into a variety of dextrous directions. Interestingly but almost certainly unintentionally, White’s assembly approach, right down to the mystical vocal samples, recalls Castle of Crime, the long-lost 1999 solo LP from Throwing Muses drummer Dave Narcizo under his Lakuna alias, albeit with a darker, heavier framing.

The individual end products swerve between the raucous and the atmospheric, often within the same piece, which makes for a gripping and restless affair. Thus, White leads us through voodoo rhythms and shadowy interluding (“Tongue Tied”); free-noise clatter and stomping that bridges the gap between Gallon Drunk’s The Rotten Mile and A Certain Ratio’s transcendently percussive “Winter Hill” (“Manors”); a brilliantly pummelling blend of sped-up garage-rock and brutalised Dave Brubeck jazz (“The Promise”); tension-fuelled prowling nightscapes (“When You Find Yourself Falling”); and twelve minutes packed with mangled cello and violin, military carnival drums, choral voices and general skronk (“Six Days”).

While Confessions of a Justified Sinner is far from an easy listen – that should never be spun whilst nursing a hangover – its relentlessly cathartic inventiveness is compelling and arresting on its own uncompromising terms. Moreover, whilst Gallon Drunk may sadly be no more, it’s reassuring to hear that some of the group’s penchant for bashing together primitivism and sophistication lives on in a new promising partial after-life configuration.

Contrastingly calmer but no less imaginative, is I Was Mistaken for A Literary Man, a fresh three-track lathe-cut 7” and digital EP from Mark Brend’s Ghostwriter project on the trusty Woodford Halse. While it doesn’t feature the serene hymnal radiance of a recent collaboration with Suzy Mangion, Andrew Rumsey and Michael Weston King, currently only available on YouTube, this trio of textured pieces still hits a sweet spot.

With its delicate acoustic rippling and warbling analogue electronics, “Between This World and the Next” is wonderfully wistful and warming on the A-side, whereas “Mistaken for a Literary Man” and “Examen” unfurl on the flipside like twinkling and arcane lost early-Tindersticks instrumentals recorded in a Victorian attic space.

Even though it won’t set the world alight, this short but carefully presented package keeps the antiquarian enigmas of Ghostwriter ticking over like a weathered but well-loved grandfather clock.

Finally, if all of the above is just a little too leftfield but you still like your melodicism laced with little lateral touches then the new 23-track Ashford International compilation, showcasing the broad but cohesive Gare du Nord label roster, could be just the trip to take. Stuffed with old, hard to find, previously unused and yet-to-be-released cuts from the esoteric enterprise’s network of signings, there’s plenty here that rewards sit back and let it all hang out airings.

Gathering-up pieces that dabble in Robyn Hitchcock’s whimsical psych-pop jangling (from Simon Klein, Joss Cope, Farmer), ornate balladry (Raleigh Long), harmony-coated folk-rock comforts (The Forensic Report), shambling early-Wedding Presentisms (Those Unfortunates), acid-bucolical rambling (The Cold Spells), Half Man Half Biscuit-gone-skiffle musings (Papernut Cambridge), lo-fi synth-pop (Carnet De Voyage, Picturebox with Deerful) and amorphous art-pop given an Underworld-like remix (Keiron Phelan), there’s a lot across Ashford International that warrants repeated visits and follow-on investigations of those involved.

Adrian
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