Nick McCabe & Si Jones from The Verve team up with long term Coldplay collaborator Davide Rossi and Santa Cruz/Portishead Drummer Mig Schillace, as well as hugely talented new comer Amelia Tucker for the most beautiful album of the year.

Black Submarine’s debut album, New Shores was recorded in the UK and Denmark, mixed in Cheshire and mastered at Abbey Road, and brings together five veteran agents of the spectacle at the height of their powers. As the name suggests, these musicians operate in subsurface currents, with songs that prowl a listener’s brain stem long after the needle is lifted and reality resumed.

The record covers vast terrain and incorporates polar contrasts however, bringing effects laden, Moby-via-Morricone soundtrack experimentation juddering into a disquiet accord with accomplished songwriting, the side that may be more familiar to fans of Jones and McCabe’s earlier material. In particular there is a sonic tie to the latter’s work with John Martyn; Black Submarine recently contributed a break beat inflected ‘Rope Soul’d’ to a Martyn tribute record, audible here. Featuring a vocal turn by 20 year-old Elly McCabe, ‘Lover’ pinpoints exactly this mellifluous territory, as does the standout ‘Heart First’, a 6 minute symphonic rapture.