Thomas Blake

For all its calming qualities, ambient music can also capture strange and uncanny life forces. Myles O’Reilly seems to understand this innately, and he puts it to mesmerising use on Music From the Threshold, an album suffused with grace and dignity, strangeness and quiet passion.

‘Moon in Gemini’ is one of those albums that wears its apparent simplicity as a cloak, disguising a host of concepts, implications, and influences. Isik Kural has quietly, and with a distinct emphasis on care, made one of the year’s most varied and rewarding albums.

While Ash Grey and the Gull Glides On may appear as a head-on collision between Andrew Wasylyk’s downbeat neoclassical folktronica and Tommy Perman’s post-club, percussion-heavy ambient constructions, under the surface, there is the faint but delicious hint of the golden age of avant-garde music.

While Dorothy Carter missed out on experiencing the sudden mad rush of creativity that her music helped to inspire, the reissue of Troubadour, with its singular, strange and beautiful tunes, is a good sign that her star is once again in the ascendency.

Masayoshi Fujita’s latest work, Migratory, is defined by its sense of flux and of growth. Comforting ambience meets melodic exploration, with the vibraphone and marimba fleshed out by subtle electronics and the sparing use of guest vocalists.

On the latest Folklore Tapes Ceremonial Counties release, a fuller picture of the hidden history of England emerges as Rob St John covers strange beasts of Durham and Preston duo Powders cover Staffordshire’s ceramic industry, both hitting the sweet spot between ambience and narrative.

Despite its stylistic shifts and variations, Jessica Ackerley’s ‘All of the Colours Are Singing’ feels like a single complete journey, an impressive achievement given the comparatively minimal ingredients she works with. It also demonstrates how deep her talent as a musician, composer and improviser runs.

On Divine Supplication, Derek Piotr weaves strands of strangeness and familiarity together in such a way that the final pieces often feel like heirlooms, half-remembered things retrieved from dusty boxes which spark bright, lucid memories.

Exploratory and constantly changing, Bill Callahan’s ‘Resuscitate!’ is serious music that doesn’t take itself too seriously. His songwriting has a message and truth. It’s Big, and it’s Clever. He’s Leonard Cohen with Paul Auster’s self-knowing postmodernism and Johnny Cash’s charred heart.

Jenny Sturgeon’s paths.made.walking is a wonderful chronicle of sound and a hopeful reminder that there are still places where escape is possible and a connection with the natural world is worth seeking.

The sixth instalment from The Folklore Tapes Ceremonial Counties series covers Cornwall and South Yorkshire. It passes the creative reins over to experimental-leaning guitarist David A Jaycock and Sheffield-based avant-psych drone merchants Slug Milk to present two very different faces of experimental folk music.

The Folklore Tapes Ceremonial Counties Vol. V covers Norfolk and West Yorkshire, courtesy of Pefkin and Dean McPhee. If this quality is maintained throughout the series, we will have a stunning and important body of work on our hands.