Lookaftering

VINYL FORMAT. It's not often you come across an artist you can genuinely refer to as a "cult legend," but Vashti Bunyan is truly that. A full thirty-five years after her only previous album, the singer returns with a new solo work, her first in all these years, and it is a breathtakingly beautiful album. Far from some kind of appendage tacked onto the end of an amazing story and a past classic, Lookaftering is a fully beautiful album in its own right. Produced by fellow Edinburgh resident Max Richter, and co-arranged with Bunyan, it's a rich, beautifully arranged and stirring album. Developing gradually and organically-- with work initially taking place between Richter and Bunyan's homes, and then at various studios in Edinburgh, London and Glasgow-- Lookaftering is anchored around Bunyan's voice and picked acoustic guitar, and Richter's piano playing and arranging. Its instrumentation includes a string quartet, oboe, harp, French horn, recorder, flute, hammer dulcimer, glasses, harmonium, and Rhodes piano, and it features contributions from Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, Adem, Adam Pierce (Mice Parade), Robert Kirby (Nick Drake), Otto Hauser and Kevin Barker (Espers, Currituck County).