Ian Skelly, Cut from a Star (Watertown)

Former Coral drummer-turned-multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter Ian Skelly's solo debut was apparently inspired by a fevered hallucination. Small wonder, then, that it has a slightly miasmic, blurry texture and heady sound that harks back to the late-Sixties heyday of British psychedelia. "Cut from a Star" suggests what Pink Floyd might have sounded like augmented with Roy Wood's cellos; and spangly guitar arpeggios, flute and mellotron make "Paper Sky" a real throwback to the Summer of Love. Elsewhere, "Caterpillar" –doubtless smoking a hookah – gradually submerges beneath extraneous found-sounds, while Skelly's pastoral harmonies are best employed on the wyrd-folk-rock of "Nickel and a Dime".

Download: Paper Sky; Nickel and a Dime; Cut from a Star