Weathering Make Mine Music****

Weatheringis the seventh or so album from Epic45 duo Ben Holton and Rob Glover, and you'll be scurrying to explore their back catalogue once this haunting, melancholic, hazy work gets under your skin. The album's theme grew out of the duo's base in a small village in Staffordshire, as it examines how creeping exurbanisation from towns and cities has seen small English communities lose their unique identities. Thematic concerns aside, Epic45 also make music that harkens back to a different time and place. Traces of classic English pastoralism, a la Durutti Column, Talk Talk and Robert Wyatt, can be found on such heartbreaking tracks as Ghosts I Have Known, With Our Backs to the City(with a lovely falsetto from Babybird's Stephen Jones) and People Say This Place Is Dying. See epic45.com

Download tracks: Ghosts I Have Known, With Our Backs to the City, People Say the Place Is Dying