Francis Plagne - Into Closed Air

Francis Plagne's nomadic tour through the knotty nexus of underground music takes in a new stop with this first time outing for London-based imprint, Bison (Still House Plants, Allie Ormston and Tim Fraser ++). Into Closed Air finds Plagne in, for want of a better term, 'song mode', pressing pause on the more abstract impulses displayed on recent LPs and returning to the folk-prog whimsy of some of his earlier work. Still, this is hardly conventional fare, Plagne stretching the capacity of the single disc format to its end with three sprawling, softly-sung lullabies that subtly disguise probing experimentalism with an accessible melodic veneer. And he doesn't get there alone, either - Plagne's name might be the only one on the cover, but there's a considerable cast of contributors performing across a variety of instruments: James Rushford, Alex MacFarlane (whose work with Chateau and on the Thousand Note Chord record offers a little context), Maria Moles, Neil Kelly and Scott McConnachie providing bass, drums, organs, pedal steel, sax and vocals in varying measure. Despite the confluence of sounds, Into Closed Air never sounds clumsy or overly busy. These are songs with the same stately grace and artful restraint as an ECM recording, albeit one that's also spent some time in the company of Robert Wyatt (and Matching Mole) and Slapp Happy, and for what it's worth, I wouldn't be surprised if Jim O'Rourke's Eureka had been floating around somewhere in the background as it was being imagined into existence. The long-form nature of the presentation suggests this might be Plagne's most ambitious collection to date, though it's a quietly stated ambition at play, not screaming its virtues but instead gently drawing the listener in to luxuriate in its gracious environs.