Ear to the Eye

Following on from last year’s compact, 22-minute Wild Wet World with its aquatic orchestra of sounds, comes a gargantuan 22-song double album. Cosmo is the son of scientist Rupert Sheldrake and voice therapist Jill Purse, and brother to biologist Merlin, with whom he runs a company selling live, fermented hot sauce. The strange brew fermenting here between ear and eye includes recordings from the natural world, alongside the nine-piece female and non-binary choir HOWL, and a six-part horn section that installs a party at the heart of ‘I Stitched My Mind Back to My Body’. Curlews, whales, fish and frogs make themselves heard amid glitchy, angular minimalist electronics soothed by vocal chorales and Sheldrake’s own clipped vocals and quirky lyrics. There’s a good deal of idiosyncrasy at play across the tracks, the sprightly brass section throwing shapes and shade across tracks like ‘I Did and I Don’t and I Do’ and ‘Run’, which sounds like an escapee from a stage show version of James Bond, while the glitchy abstract electronica that segues into bird song and insect chatter on ‘But Once a Child’ recalls his vivid explorations on Wake Up Calls.