I was in Bordeaux recently, staying in a temporarily vacant flat owned by a drummer who had a great record collection and a weird bathroom-and-bedroom-in-the-same-room scenario (is that a French thing?). Anyway, when I awoke to the smell of coffee and croissants (it was a pretty idyllic morning), the drummer plus band had returned and were waiting to practice upstairs. Despite the record collection and good taste in furniture, my expectation was that, like 95 per cent of the music out there, it would be a bit shit. It wasn’t.

That band were Alba Lua and they sound something like Syd Barrett soundtracking a spaghetti western, i.e. eccentric, reverb-heavy, dreamy pop music. You may notice that no drums feature on the recording, nor does a third person appear in the photo above. That’s probably because they haven’t gotten round to recording with the drummer yet. Regardless, it’s still a beautiful racket and they’re releasing a record on German label Satellite of Love soon, so maybe we’ll get to hear the full sound then.

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Alba Lua, “Damnation”

JOEL WRIGHT