Hypnotic Brass Ensemble

★★★

This Is A Mindfulness Drill JAGJAGUWAR. CD/DL/LP/MC

Reimagining Richard Youngs’

Sapphie to celebrate Jagjaguwar’s 25th birthday.

Richard Youngs’ doomed, desolate fifth solo LP is a long way from the busking New York and Chicago streets pounded by Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, sons of Sun Ra trumpeter and astral jazz pioneer Phil Cohran. Their sympathetic take on the Glaswegian avant-gardist’s highly personal 2000 LP is a swooning, swelling marvel that puts guest singers front and centre. While Moses Sumney’s dazzling falsetto doesn’t need to work as hard as Youngs’ to hit the highs, his solitude is palpable in the ascending motifs of Soon It Will Be Fire, a trick only half realised on baroque-pop bard Perfume Genius’s contribution. Sharon Van Etten’s plaintive soul-baring on snail’s-pace closer The Graze Of Days steals it. More sigh than song, it raises goosebumps, like the original.