Various: The Black Hill, The Glass Sky CS

Glasgow’s Somewhere Press label follow 2023's stunning 'The Blue Hour' compilation with this moving, contemplative new collection inspired by Scottish folklore and featuring exclusive tracks from Teresa Winter, doris dana, Dania, Alliyah Enyo, The Dengie Hundred, ARBORE and more.

It's not taken long for Somewhere Press to mark out its own territory in a space that runs between Kranky, Crépuscule, A Colourful Storm and Belgium's eminently collectible STROOM label. There's pop music, folk and even jazz in there somewhere, but all those elements are filtered through the label’s wide (and literate) spread of influences. Colombian-born artist Mónica Mesa (aka doris dana)'s spectral meditations on 'reveries', for example, or Ugnė Uma's noir-esque trip hop on last year's 'Rage Love Strange Love'. You can never quite predict what you’re gonna get, but you know it'll be memorable.

The starting point for 'The Black Hill, The Glass Sky' is a text from art historian Eloise Bennett that references Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Nancy Holt and Margaret Tait, among others. "Moving through the grasses and bracken as shades," Bennett begins, "we hear the shifting of green-grey branches, watch the dew falling, the rock soften." Her rhythmic, sensual words speak of verdant landscapes and thick clouds of smoke, surging through the album's 11 tracks like a spell, seeping through the artists' eroded vocals and suspended, weightless drones.

We open with The Dengie Hundred and vocalist Gemma Blackshaw, whose suggestive whispers pull Grouper-like vocal echoes into muted, ghostly subs. Aaliyah Enyo follows, looping her voice on the aptly titled 'Choir For Hours' to form a dense soundscape that's so blissfully organic you can almost feel the moss brushed over its surface. Berlin-based Irish artist Dylan Kerr (aka Baptist Goth), meanwhile, reinterprets trad murder ballad 'The Cruel Mother' - famously covered by Joan Baez and Judy Collins - singing its chilling words into the void over an ominous organ drone.

French duo ARBORE follow last year's ritualistic 'Aboyer au mauvais arbre' with the lysergic 'Caverne Fredonne', using elements they re-amped and recorded in the Ariège region's ancient limestone caves. "This is a way to connect with the underworld that the poem evokes," they explain. And when a beat appears for the first time, on doris dana's 'Gone For Hours', it sounds like a thunderclap in the dark, slowly arcing thru Mesa's recitations. Teresa Winter then magnifies buzzing feedback and unsettling chimes on 'Long Waves Inverted', offering a palate cleanser before Mary Hurrell's gorgeous 'Roses the Whole Place' offers a low-lit high-point, leaving Dania to send us off on delicate finale 'Weave & Bury'.

There's much music around right now that purports to re-imagine fictional histories, but what makes 'The Black Hill, The Glass Sky' so good is that it accepts the fuzziness of the premise, surveying contemporary reactions to the ghosts of the past. More importantly, it makes for an utterly gorgeous listen.