Balmorhea ★★★★ The Wind DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON. CD/DL/LP

Texas-based duo’s eighth LP: a musical analogue for Otia Imperialia, a 13th century compendium of miracles.

Balmorhea’s Rob Lowe and Michael A Muller conceived

The Wind as a return to first principles – analogue instrumentals created by improvising together in a room, although a budget from classical imprint Deutsche Grammophon (and the run of Nils Frahm’s Berlin studio) has fleshed out those initial sketches considerably. The album title nods to the medieval Caesarius of Arles, no less, who allegedly transported a fertility-enhancing sea breeze to desolate places ‘shut up in a glove’. There’s certainly a fecund quality to opener Day Dawns In Your Right Eye, its dolorous piano chords offset by soaring high strings and Lili Cuzor’s intimate French reading from Otia Imperialia. Elsewhere, Rose In Abstract ebbs and flows between lugubrious pipe organ, plaintive piano and Clarice Jensen’s aching cello lines, while The Myth’s lattice of acoustic guitars become swathed in updraughts of wordless voices. David Sheppard