“Being caught between heaven and earth,” says Kenny Anderson, aka King Creosote (KC), about the feeling he has in exploring the tension and harmony between tradition and technology; between analogue and digital philosophies. Hence the title, Astronaut Meets Applemen, heaven and earth, digital and analogue, rootsy rusticness and binary modernism.

It may seem he’s a bit late to the party in exploring these tensions (am I the only one who can't believe that some piece of a ‘vintage’ wooden school chair will be sold for upwards of £100, or that some piece of home-baked bread goes for the price of a decent pint?), but Anderson has been doing this since the beginning, back to when he set up the Fence Records label in the mid-90s, a label defined by its lo-fi, electro aesthetic, but whose roots were in the homespun, collective spirit of folk music.

Indeed, this philosophy is further enacted via KC’s pre-recording methods for this album, whereby he went in with very little to hand, and just decided to wing it, in order to re-discover his youthful innocence, and to not dwell too much on the content; musically and lyrically.

"It's a busking set, but in a studio,” says Anderson. It’s also, as always, a relaxed sounding work, sometimes at pains to not show too much willingness to go anywhere except to float on its rhythmically repetitive qualities; a spacious, breathing and contemplative quality throughout, enhanced by the liberal use of harps and bagpipes, as King Creosote continues on his journey of cosmic wonder, folk poetry and self-deprecation. With the help of Catriona McKay (harp), Mairearad Green (bagpipes), Gordon Maclean (double bass), Hannah Fisher (violin and vocals), Sorren Maclean (guitar and vocals) and Pete Harvey (cello), this ensemble busks, jams and improvises throughout. Beginning with the droning quality of album opener 'You Just Want', there’s seven glorious minutes of heart-wrenching anguish, with raw acoustic rhythms slowly flowering into orchestral folk-pop. "When you need someone to cry on in the depths of despair, I shall be elsewhere / When you want someone more for their being, and not so much for their breeds, can I be him?" he sings in that familiar Scottish brogue. Meanwhile album highlight Melin Wynt (Welsh for windmill) is mildly euphoric and rhythmic, featuring some lovely bagpipes, despite the rather unsettling sentiments of the lyrics which are anti-wind turbine. And this rhythmic jamming spirit re-surfaces on the life appraising 'Surface'. Electric and acoustic guitars drive the song forward along this questioning road, before bagpipes bring it back to earth, such is the essential earthiness of this spiritual instrument.

Elsewhere, KC indulges in his tendency to re-work old songs, as he does here with the violin and harp infused ‘Faux Call’, a song that originally appeared on the B-side to 2007's 'You've No Clue Do You'. The tension between technologies is explored via ‘Betelgeuse’, which features a rather incongruous old school cassette recording, overdubbed with violin, whose title refers to the star that can be seen in the Orion constellation, otherwise known as Alpha Origins. "I have travelled far to douse the astral fire in my heart" he sings on this otherwise simple acoustic-folk tune. The gentle homeliness continues via the looped voice of his baby daughter for the daydream ambience of ‘Peter Rabbit Tea’, a reminder perhaps that all babies have absolutely no clue about modern gadgetry (tablets, gaming, phones etc). And the rambling experimentation continues apace with the almost out-of-place, vaguely retro calypso-pop of Love Life, but which contains some classic KC couplets such as "When your love life becomes complicated and your sex life hits the rocks" and "Her jealous accusations know no bounds / Scarlett Johansson was never in my house", sung in Villagers style.

Astronaut Meets Appleman may see KC caught between heaven and earth, but aren't we all? However, and as usual, he provides some much needed little shafts of light into our collective souls, providing questions and answers a-plenty, along with the life affirming qualities of his music helping us to see it through.
Jeff Hemmings

Website: kingcreosote.com