Albion Voice

She's a one-woman show wrapped in the colours of leftfield folk pop, Indian strings, art ensemble music and a broad net of influences and inflections. William Blake had a view on Albion; so did British beat poet Michael Horovitz in the 60s. Peter Doherty pinned it to his hat with a syringe, and Damon Albarn gave it a John Dee facemask. What does Bishi do? The album begins with bells and birds (like Albarn's Dr Dee opera) and the Middle English of Chaucer's prologue to the Canterbury Tales, recited over a massed chorale of multitracked voices. The title song follows, with its refrain of ‘bewildering world, despair and rejoice, Indian skin, Albion which is the lyrical kernel of the album – Albion as not a place but a state of being defined by the voice. The most ambitious track, ‘Dia Ti Maria, draws on Paradise Lost and ancient Greek, layered with a heavenly choir of Bishi's vocals over nine minutes of charming invention.

Here, the Kronos Quartet weave around the voices, while the Ligeti Quartet play on ‘The Last of England,’ dedicated to that most English of artists, Derek Jarman. Further down the line, Bishi duets with her Indian classical singer mother on ‘Gram Chara’, with words by Rabindranath Tagore, and the string quartets beautifully track a fine line between Western and Indian styles. Ambitious, inspired and immaculately conceived, Bishi's Albion Voice deserves to carry far across the raging main.