Nick Edward Harris
Album: The Tall Trees
Label: Shifted Fiction
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.nickedwardharris.com

Having given up teaching and taken off to refine his craft while living a Spartan existence in New Zealand, singer-songwriter guitarist Harris eventually returned to London to release critically acclaimed debut album Chimera. Three years on, he's back with a follow-up he describes as "a very different animal to the first", one recorded entirely at night with Emmy The Great producer Nick Trepka at the helm as well as on bass, percussion and piano and featuring Angie Rance on flugelhorn, trumpet and accordion, cellist Derek Yau, violinist Hayley Cannon and Charlotte Harris on flute.

Harris is a decidedly idiosyncratic talent and his vocals, a sort of cross between swallow and strangulation, smoked with honey, could prove an acquired taste, but, the more you're exposed to them, the more they weave a spell. If you're looking for a convenient pigeonhole, then I guess he's a sort of cocktail of John Martyn and Nick Drake, a mix of heady blues fumes and pastoral scents laced with 60s progressive folk, his time in New Zealand informing his music with a strong sense of space while, evocative of Andy McKee, his often percussive acoustic guitar playing and unusual arrangements add even richer colours and textures to the work.

The first track, Calm Your Demons, is a complex, intoxicating affair that starts out on jittery, descending fingerpicked guitar runs, plucked strings giving way to violin swirls and the title providing a mantra-like chorus chant before a mid-section psychedelic, backwards-tape freak out mid-way conjures the impression of being caught up in some chaotic Eastern bazaar, a flute providing the siren call to pull you back into the moment.

After such an urgent opening flurry, Unarmed with its introductory simple, circling acoustic motif, percussive slap technique and mellow flugelhorn is a welcome contemplative change of mood and tempo before sliding into the violin-backed folk blues Trying To Be Silent with its enigmatic lines about how "there were three of us alive when we left that place with the moon as our guide."

At times, he can be relatively straightforward in his playing and arrangements, as evidenced by Evening, the piano-led Black Box, nimbly fingerpicked reverie On The Way To Leh and the instrumental The Red Squirrel (though that does feature skittering percussion that sounds like a typewriter). However, while these are quality numbers, it's fair to say they are less interesting than more complex material like the billowing Eastern influences and ebb and flow rhythms of the narratively mysterious The Horse Road, echoey, storm tossed folk-blues A Sterile Heart , the soothing, cello-adorned atmospheric instrumental Moscow To Beijing or the brooding Then And Now with its musical tapestry of slap percussion, violin and female harmonies, though it should be pointed out that the chorus melody owes a considerable debt to Townes Van Zandt's Poncho & Lefty.

The album closes on a gentle, swaying note with About You, strained and muted trumpet solo taking one final wander off the beaten track on an album that serves a mesmerising musical reminder that intricacy, minimalism and craftsmanship can stir the visceral as well as the cerebral.

Mike Davies