303

Combine the following ingredients – trumpet, guitar, mandolin, banjo, lute harp, lyre harp, dulcitone, chimes, cornet and bowed psaltery – add in the slopes of Cadbury Castle, long associated with myths of King Arthur and Camelot, within earshot of the mighty A303, and stir in the atmospherics of the Thomas á Becket Church in South Cadbury, and you have the exquisite musical miniatures set deep in the West country landscape that is Three Cane Whale's latest album.

Recorded in situ by Leveret's Rob Harbron, these 12 tracks are interwoven with the sounds and resonances of their locations – footsteps, aircraft, birdsong, rain, waves of traffic surging along the A303, the footsteps of the three players as they approach the ancient hill fort. Pete Judge, Alex Vann and Paul Bradley have summoned the spirit of landscape and place into their music from the start, and on their fifth album, it is distilled further. The album's 12 short tracks transport listeners to the slopes of Camelot and beyond, with nods towards William Blake on the closing ‘The Lost Traveller's Dream Under the Hill’, and to 1970s poet Frances Horowitz on ‘The Good Dark of This Room’. It's exquisite, within and without.