Sublime, BoC-wise ambient drift by Calum McLeod, supplying a genteel antithesis to his tonking hardcore techno with Clouds, for Mark “Mother” Maxwell and DJ Crud’s Concrete Cabin

If Glasgow’s Concrete Cabin is best known as incubator of bombproof mutant rave, this release frames it as a metaphoric bothy sheltering McLeod’s atmospheric wanderlust. Draped in mist and following his instincts for melodic lines of thought, it’s equivalent to a hand-knit comfort blanket or a crackling fire in the hearth, replete with mice scurrying about nibbling ramblers’ crumbs and toes, and with a babbling burn outside. Yeah yeah, you can probably tell we need a holiday, but right now this is as close as we’ll get and it’s all the more welcome for it.

Evoking similar terrain to BoC interludes or Lord of the Isles’ most pastoral intimations, but vaporised to a more subtly suggestive quintessence, the nine tracks transmute a deep topography of OS and spiritual grid references into a form of psychoacoustic navigation on the back of yer eyelids. Each track takes as long as it needs to fray its flux of plaintive, woollen melodies and ember-smoulder rhythms into sublime permutations, drifting from ‘Herz’ to ‘Nostalghia’ via the heather harmonic hues of ‘LWK’ and gloaming pads of ‘…in the sky Zentraleuropa’ with hints of classic ‘70s kosmiche that fed into classic ‘90s ambient forms via Eno and his ilk.

Pack this in your mental knapsack with a bottle of Ceol Ila and some sturdy waterproofs and woollens and take yourself off piste for the best holiday sans stealth turds or smelly busses.