Otherness (Milky Clear LP)

In the first moments of Otherness, Grayson Gilmour's wonderfully rich new album, he has given an object lesson in how intimately word and sound can be entwined. These aren't just a few cool samples splashed around some nice songs. This is a place where song and sound are inseparable. And that intricate weave of tone and imagery continues through 43 minutes of music.

Gilmour has had plenty of practice at this. He began making recordings in his teens, if not earlier. His first releases were handmade things: home-recorded and presented in inky packages, meticulously photocopied, folded and glued. As time went on these grew more sophisticated.

Though an accomplished player on all the traditional rock instruments - piano, guitar, drums, bass - he has a more specialised gift for making music out of things that weren't instruments to start with: found sounds, sonic detritus, which he has been known to copy back and forth between two old cassette recorders, until they develop a patina, a kind of acoustic cortex. Sometimes these will become the textural and rhythmic foundations for songs. On Otherness such building blocks are enmeshed with electronics and those more traditional instruments, to which he also adds live strings. The results are lush, surprising and ever-shifting.

But if Gilmour is more sonically inventive than ever, he has also become more direct in the way he expresses himself; more generous with his melodies, more open with his emotions. His singing has never been more prominent or assured. Above all, Otherness is an album of glorious pop songs - yearning, heart-tugging, romantic - encased in beautiful sound worlds.

"The yearning, layered vocals and string quartet dovetail nicely with recent uncanny-choral strains" - The Spinoff

"Who else writes tunes as achingly beautiful as these? Not many people around here, that's for sure" - Nick Bollinger, The Listener

"The gifted, young musician is like a mosaic. His music goes beyond description as he cannot be pigeonholed into a single genre...Gilmour is unquestionably a talent on the rise, and he has the chance to be New Zealand's next big breakout star." - The Revue