Andrew Wasylyk & Tommy Perman – ‘Be The Hammer (feat. Aidan Moffat)’ (from ‘Ash Grey and the Gull Glides On’ LP)

Third album in a row in this year’s Unpopular advent where two artists with exemplary solo catalogues collaborate to create something that surpasses the heights one might hope for. The chilly electronica of twilight meets sun warmed morning room pianos. Subdued drawing room rhythms dance with 13th floor bedroom breaths. Fingers click. An afternoon sunbeam brings the garden to a partially curtained retreat; a clock chimes somewhere in the depths and time seeps through the cracks in the concrete. For almost all its length the pieces on ‘Ash Grey and the Gull Glides On’ are instrumental. Words would feel like an intrusion. Yet when they do come in the form of Aidan Moffat’s vocal on album closing ‘Be The Hammer’ they feel oddly inevitable. Simultaneously challenging and comforting, they are like the voice track from a brutalist observational documentary wrapping itself around a Godard daydream.