Daniel Herskedal and Emilie Nicolas: Out of the Fog (Edition Records/digital outlets)

Award-winning Norwegian composer/tuba player Herskedal here teams up with singer Nicolas (four Norwegian Grammys) for a collection of songs which have Nicolas at times soaring in a soul-jazz manner over Herskedal's cinematic backdrops which occasionally really do suggest the album's title.

Elsewhere, as on the airy Found, this approaches a more helium-filled Enya adrift on a gently churning sea of beats, or even allusions to Middle Eastern sounds (the very Arabic instrumental Uneven Terrain by Herskedal with Nicolas' wordless vocals).

So sometimes this is akin to a polished ECM release with world music touchstones (think Stephan Micus), at others something from a soundtrack and at others (the Haunting I'll Sleep Later On again located closer to North Africa than Norway) very classy Scandinavian art-pop.

These artists are of course unfamiliar to most (all?) South Pacific readers.

But Nicolas' yearning or airborne vocals coupled with the deep and solid substrata the other musicians create makes for a quiet collection which is very evocative . . .

And you won't dismissively relegate tuba to marching bands after this.