Far from being some expansive void, the space in Space Mirror is a landscape that is teeming with alien lifeforms, a whole host of strange things crawling and flying and hovering around in ways which we do not understand. This is space as an environment, a frontier for us to delve into and explore, with sights to see and lessons to learn.

As well as being reminiscent of 60s sci-fi, there is also an aboriginal elemental to Space Mirror. Underneath the seething electronic environment there is a native American culture, a scene of people living off the land and seeing extraterrestrial beings above a dark Earth. Maybe this is the title’s mirror, a reflection of a human existence in the colossal expanse of space, one which takes centuries to bounce back to us.

Space Mirror is out on the 29th July on Kranky.

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Here, the difficulty in set-ups is successfully overcome, with Clarke outlining the songs with his words and guitar before letting others fill them in to create an experimental breed of folk-rock. Banjos, synths, saxophones, a whole host of instruments pop up over the record while all held together with Clarke’s vocals. The result is a strange blend of human and alien, spacey sounds over warm lyrics. In retrospect the artwork makes sense, something that is very human and familiar yet not.

The album is available now on Bandcamp on a pay-what-you-want basis. Twist became a tribute to it’s creation. A testament to hard work, friendship and the refusal to give up a goal. An album of emotions and experiments. Twist deserves your attention.

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Dark Shores is an album about space. According to various interviews it began as a concept about space exploration and wars but the human element came to the fore. The album is still influenced by space, but rather than flying saucers and lasers, the ‘space’ here is an empty vacuum, the ultimate isolation. From the opener ‘Diamond Drill’, with a closing refrain echoing ‘Its a lonely life’, you realise the album is not going to be the most upbeat listen. ‘Satellite Moon’ and ‘Dark Shores’ further the imagery of space as emptiness. ‘Maureen’s’ and ‘Little Wishes’ are full of the same hope and regret that made ’Bonfire’ so enthralling. ‘Last Grains’, a song set in a not-so hard to imagine broken future about just that, is quick and desperate, capturing perfectly the antinomic pressures put on modern persons juggling family, employment and social status. ‘Trap Door’ clings to a chink of light in darkness. These are songs crafted carefully to entwine the fantastic and the recognisable, perfect examples of his paradoxical use of fantasy to portray reality.

Showalter is not afraid to change his sound to suit the stories they tell. The early version of ‘Spacestations’, recorded for the brilliant Shaking Through series, was packed with epic synths and was worlds away (no pun intended) from the acoustic singer-songwriters he is often compared with. Since, the song has been striped back, synths replaced with a more familiar guitar, but the switch highlighted just how versatile Showalter can be. Leave Ruin was classic folk strumming, Pope Killdragon experimented with metal-tinged noise, and now we have sci-fi synths and succinct rock. His voice and lyrics would be effective against any musical backdrop and Strand of Oaks can therefore go in any direction. I for one cannot wait to follow.

Buy Dark Shores on CD from Ten Atoms or digitally via Bandcamp.

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