Taken by Trees: East of Eden (Rough Trade)

This ethereal and exotically charming album by Swedish singer-composer Victoria Bergsman (aka Taken by Trees) is something of a rarity: she travelled to Lahore where she encountered not just the local musicians but a certain, shall we say, unusual attitude towards unmarrried women in Pakistan.

None of that tension is here in the music however where her languid vocals float over tabla, flute and keening vocals by some of the Sufi musicians she recorded with. There is a definite dream-like quality to the spare arrangements which have also been given some studio sheen after the fact.

There is a real delicacy to which the spirited flute adds emotional uplift, and the whole album (a tidy 32 minutes) has a neo-ambient alt.folk quality also as acoustic guitars interweave with her vocals which sometimes sound as if they are coming from a distant room.

An unusual, and unsually pleasurable, album which brings together some very different threads.