Luke Cowan - Six Places

London-based multi-instrumentalist Luke Cowan quietly self-released a couple of LPs in small number in 2017 and 2020 which mostly passed everyone by until they were recently discovered by Infinite Expanse and passed around a few sympathetic shops by the Central Bazaar distro network. Infinite Expanse have now gone one step further in releasing an entirely new collection of songs that despite their modest roots, are possessed of a hushed ambition. Recorded in four different locations, sometimes performed alone, sometimes with others, and making use of both tradiional instruments - piano, guitars, dulcimer, violin - and less obvious noise-emitting objects (a pinecone, spoons, wine glasses), Six Places radiates a gentle bucolic tone that sits at the intersection of composition and improvisation. Entirely wordless, we're left to infer it's meaning, which is perhaps best taken from the album title itself. These are songs about places and their resonsance, the sound of the seemingly domestic settings (this does not seem to be studio made music) in which they were recorded and the instinctive interconnections between the people that are making it. If it is often very pretty, then it's also equally contemplative and morose, attending a little tension to the otherwise serene, the same way the beauty of the countryside holds it's own unspoken mysteries. Fans of Aqueduct Ensemble, Blue Lake's Stikling, memotone's acoustic work or Group Listening would be well served spending some time with Six Places.

FFO: Flaer, Aqueduct Ensemble, Blue Lake, memotone, Group Listening