Hether Blether

Named after one of the vanishing islands from his native Orkney's folklore, the final album in composer Erland Cooper's trilogy shaped by his homeland traces his childhood footsteps while continuing to explore the rhythm of life and the language of the Orcadian people. Cooper's music paints delicate pictures with undulating orchestrations and understated phrases, now waltzing to quiet tuned percussion, now introducing rolling keyboard figures and insistent choral passages as spoken words in the local dialect add to the sense of character.

Track titles such as ‘Linga Holm’, ‘Skreevar’ and ‘Longhope’, whose lifeboat disaster may be familiar to Songlines readers from childhood news reports, somehow underline Cooper's austere shadings and his singing, which was either absent or rather tentative on the first two albums in the series, ruminates with gentle confidence on the electro-folk-pop of ‘Peedie Breeks’ (Orcadian for short trousers). Although not given to sharing their more rambunctious celebratory moments, there's something of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra that might appeal to fans of that group in this music's minimalistic stealth.