C Duncan
Album: Architect
Label: FatCat
Tracks: 9
Website: https://www.facebook.com/mrchrisduncan

Now, here's a thing. Chamber pop funnelled through pastoral folk, church choirs, daisy-age singer-songwriter-isms, Ibiza dawn chorus and just a twist of proggy sunshine pop to boot. It's a potent blend that has already enlisted the likes of Radcliffe & Maconie, Huw Stephens, NME, Les Inrockuptibles and Ricky Ross as admirers of this classically trained multi-instrumentalist Glaswegian.

This summer he was recruited to open for Belle & Sebastian at Somerset House and The Blue Nile at the Edinburgh Festival, while the well placed will have caught his sets at Farmfest, Wickerman and Latitude. By next summer expect him to have shot up the bill and, should he so decide, be a fixture on the coolest playlists.

This debut album rounds up his stunningly beautiful singles, Say and the just gorgeous For, with its harmonious rounds and gently insistent melodies. No less arresting is Garden, released as a single with the album, where buzz-pop guitars swing with a Farfisa beat and vocal stretches The Association might be missing - "I feel so alive," goes the vocal refrain. And how!

Influences? Undeniably there's a hint of Wild Beasts, Fleet Foxes too, some Nick Drake, Floyd, Bolan, Yes, Wolfgang Amadeus is in there, so is Sibelius, Vaughn Williams, Miles Davis and the West London obscuro-pop of Jonny Trunk's muckers from the Wonderfulsound stable - Kramford Look, Superimposers, Monks Kitchen.

In truth though, each and every track here stands in its own time and place. Silence and Air sounds like it should be heard in parish churches up and down the land, He Believes In Miracles belongs to Malibu Beach or Laurel Canyon, Here To There roots out the classical complexities and rattles them through a chilly electric guitar that hints at motorik, the title track shimmers with psychedelia, Novices brings Ipanema to the choir stalls, while the plaintive closer I'll Be Gone By Winter takes folk music back to pre-pop Tin Pan Alley, melts the frost and strolls over heathlands in spring.

For whatever the season Architect is a magical record… for many reasons.

Nick Churchill
http://www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk