3 Almonds and a Walnut

The second album from the partnership of Welsh-Iranian singer-songwriter Roshi Nasehi and electronic musician Graham Dowdall picks up where debut The Sky and the Caspian Sea left off. Deconstructed Iranian folk songs (sung in Farsi) and wryly observant original songs about life in London (sung in English) are united by an open electronica landscape to produce sophisticated cross-cultural urban art-pop. But 3 Almonds and a Walnut is a more confident, mature record than its predecessor. The characterisation of the songs is more distinctive and the tunes themselves are more memorable.

Roshi’s fragrant singing is pitched in a high-register and layered in close harmony, spinning ethereally above Dowdall’s sparse beats and splashes of cello and piano. Opener ‘Oosh Badaam Ber Goz’ (which is the album’s title, in Farsi) and ‘Aziz Joon’ both set seductive vocal lines against a broad texture of dance beats to stirring effect. ‘Nunhead Cemetery’ uses location recordings as a backdrop for a delicate ballad while ‘Don’t Breathe it to a Soul but Amarilly is Getting Gay with a Dude’ wins the prize for quirkiest title and most effective looping. The tone becomes a little unvaried later on in the album, but Roshi is nevertheless an original, creative voice.