It was only just over a year ago that James Yorkston, Jon Thorne and Susuf Khan dropped Everything Sacred on the market, an out-of-the-blue record that turned a few heads, surprised some, and elated others. It was an original, leftfield work that made an unlikely alliance of folk, Indian and jazz. Sure, it didn't set the world alight, but it was released on the highly regarded Domino label, and it did open another world, for those brave and adventurous enough to try an alternative to guitar and electronic based music. They were even invited to perform at The Great Escape, surely a bona fide stamp of approval from alt-music tastemakers.

I'm guessing the experiment was successful enough for their label to have another crack so soon after, to build on the quirky delights of that debut, a confluence of elements that brought in Yorkston's Scottish folk influences, Thorne's dablings in double-bass jazz-style, and Khan's classical sarangi background (he is the grandson of one of the masters, Ustad Sabri Khan). Moreover, there's vocal fusions of Yorkston's almost deadpan folk tones, Khan's freewheeling, scat-like devotional style, and Thorne's earthly inflection.

The wildly varying approach of that debut has been pretty much replicated for the follow up. So, a 15 minute improvisation will rub shoulders with a two minute folksie interlude, manic jams will snuggle up with meditative passages, old folk tales will trade stories with ancient Hindi, the increasingly confident and fluid interplay between the three somehow combining these disparate elements into a generally cohesive whole. This is epitomised by the mini epic 'False True Piya', Yorkston singing the first part a capella, a fragment of Annie Watsons's version of the famous folk traditional 'The Daemon Lover' (aka 'The House Carpenter'), before it morphs into a band performance that fuses jazz, Indian and folk, while Khan sings in Hindi; a tale written by him that is about a lover longing for a beloved. It was these lyrics by Khan that inspired Yorkston to introduce the song in the way that he did.

And the humour that was brought forth via their version of Ivor Cutler's 'Little Black Buzzer' on Everything Sacred is replicated with the cojoining of a short droning instrumental passage ('Samant Saarang') that segues into a cover of Roger Eno's 'Just A Bloke' with Thorne's mournful cockney tones: "Just a bloke. Nobody cares, nobody worries, because you're just a bloke," while he deploys a simple double bass groove, overlaid by Khan's expressive sarangi.

Elsewhere, Yorkston's strong folk leanings are brought to bear on his originals 'The Blue of the Thistle', 'The Blues You Sang', the nostalgic looking back of youthful love and indescretion of 'Bales', and a re-working of the traditional song 'Recruited Collier' all, for the most part, featuring double bass and sarangi embellishments, and Khan also providing vocals.

For sure, Neuk Wight Delhi All-Stars does come across as a patchwork at times, and there is a half-finished feel to some of the material here, the shorter folk songs like scraps of (good) ideas, the longer improvsiational pieces going nowhere in particular except on a magic carpet ride of transcendental bliss. But the journey is an interesting one, through the musical environs that on paper could seem to be contrasting but in the hands of YTK deflty demonstates that music and language are indeed universal.
Jeff Hemmings

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