Documenting a year of recording in the remote Pembrokeshire hills, ‘Beautiful Isolation’ is an apt title for this collection of tracks, part ambient/electronica loveliness, part conceptual field recording. Perhaps reflecting his cabin fever, individual tracks barely focus for longer than is necessary, re-enforcing the need to experience the album as one complete document.
Acoustic guitar and ghostly voices also appear through the haze adding a uniqueness to the album, bordering on blissed-out psych-pop in places. A masterful assembly of sounds, textures and song fragments blur the boundaries between a number of genres but do produce a very rewarding whole.
7/10
Words by Nick Annan
