The new Broadcast album, in the company of Julian House’s Focus Group, has proved to be one of those records that resist, in some way, being written about. Perhaps it may be something to do with how “Broadcast And The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age” is a slippery, fragmentary listen; a collage of 23 disjointed, often dislocated snippets that feel as if they’ve been harvested from a dusty collection of neglected old soundtracks. An album that slips in and out of focus and of your attention, sneaking up when you least expect it. Which, I suppose, is at least some of the point, and something which has a lot to do with the hauntology micro-genre which it so comfortably inhabits. I’ve been very wary of the hauntology term in the past, often thinking of the scene as the confection of some occasionally over-wrought critics who are, essentially, striving to give some intellectual legitimacy to a) being nostalgic for TV soundtracks from their ‘70s childhoods; and b) remembering that some of them could be pretty discomforting. In other words: wow, wasn’t “Children Of The Stones” creepy? A fair point, of course. There’s a good argument to be made about the subversive and creative aspects of making somewhat uncanny music inspired by semi-kitsch TV shows and unreliable memories; it’s certainly more imaginative, or at least post-modern, than the more orthodox mystical fascinations of many of the folk and psych artists I write about here. But hauntology seems to have an orthodoxy all of its own; I can barely recall a genre, however minuscule, that has embraced a critical rhetoric and a compunction to define itself so keenly. That aesthetic has clearly spread to Broadcast; ironically, really, since you could argue that their crotchety, bewitching brand of retro-futurism, their obsessive mining of lost library recordings, was one of the key inspirations of the artists gathered around House’s Ghost Box label. “Witch Cults”, then, buys into the whole haunt-ideology wholesale. And, if it feels a bit tortuously over-conceptualised at times, it also sounds largely great and compelling. Where once Broadcast appeared to be soundtracking a cocktail party on the wheel in space (I think I drew that allusion in maybe their first NME review, self-referentially enough), now the vibes are much more arcane. Eerie playground chants sometimes emerge out of the crackly morass. Harpsichords and pipes flutter unsteadily through the mix, sometimes facing off against dazed, jazzy breaks. A slightly dank atmosphere predominates, redolent in some ways of Geoff Barrow’s current Beak> project. Broadcast’s old habit/asset of writing most of their songs in waltz time has been solved – by them not writing many things that could be adequately called songs. When they do – most notably on the second track, “The Be Colony”, blessed with a rare and lovely Trish Keenan vocal – the unavoidable reference point remains the United States Of America. Broadcast’s links to Joseph Byrd’s band are now so strong and enduring, it seems churlish to see them as being under an influence. Maybe, more kindly, Broadcast have assiduously pursued the sound that Byrd, Dorothy Moskowitz and the others abandoned so prematurely. It’s a terrific song, anyhow, which soon enough dissolves into a haphazard clutch of potent, odd, rapidly-discarded ideas. For a while, it’s easy to drift away from properly listening to the album, then something will drag you back: the drones, breaks and panpipe freakout of “Ritual/Looking In”, maybe, that kicks off the quite brilliant last third of the “Witch Cults” where many of the preceding ideas come to a very cinematic fruition. The plot, of course, is obscure. But when the determinedly spooked chant of “What I Saw” emerges out of various field recordings, liminal melodies, clank and creak, it’s hard not to think of “The Maypole Song” and “The Wicker Man” in general. Soon enough, though, some glass breaks, a toy squeaks, and a severely warped choir carries on into “Oh Joy”. The title, I think, may be ironic.

Following on from yesterday’s catch-up session (thanks for the Gothenburg report on J Tillman and dulcimer, by the way), another bunch of stuff today that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. Blues Control are a New York duo whose previous records have been interesting, but hard to pin down; slippery, evasive, faintly noisy jams that have precious little to do, overtly, with the blues. On the excellent “Local Flavor”, however, it’s fractionally easier to get a handle on them. There’s a distinct kosmische vibe to plenty of these four tracks, though their tools aren’t always typical – a lot of piano and squitting drum machines floating through the lo-fi synthscapes, and some disruptive guitar turned down in the background. “Good Morning”, featuring Kurt Vile of all people on trumpet, is crudely akin to ambient garage rock, while “Rest On Water” is a needling reimagining of, maybe, an old Budd/Eno jam. A grower, for sure. As is the appealingly-titled new one from MV & EE, “Barn Nova”. I mentioned this the other day on a blog about their current labelmates Hush Arbors, and it’s starting to bed in now. You’ve got to be pretty intensely dedicated to keep up with MV/EE releases, and I must admit I only really know their more overground things, but this is fairly typical of those, being impressively frayed outsider freak-outs that sit somewhere between Neil Young, the Dead, Royal Trux and perhaps, especially when you hear Matt Valentine’s high, unsteadily questing vocals, a Mercury Rev shorn of gloss and pomp. New Boredoms-related activity is always welcome, and “Armonico Hewa”, the latest from Yoshimi’s band OOIOO, is typically up to scratch; a playful, no-wave iteration of her other band’s tribal leanings. Pummelling polyrhythms, severe ebbing riffs and a lot of vocal exuberance here, though – as I’ve mentioned in an extended column about the whole Boredoms in this month’s Uncut – it’s maybe not quite one of their best albums. Finally, Shrinebuilder, a self-proclaimed supergroup from the underground metal/doom scene. Consisting of Wino from Spirit Caravan etc, Al Cisneros (Om), Dale Crover of The Melvins and Scott Kelly (Neurosis), “Shrinebuilder” is an enjoyably crunchy debut, maybe a deal more energised and feisty than certain stoner rock reputations might suggest, and fairly prog in places, too. Being a bit of a dabbler in these things, it’s hard not to resort to old Sabbath references out of ignorance but, of course, there’s no harm in that.

Bit of a catch-up, today. These are a bunch of records that’ve figured in a good few Uncut playlists, and that I’ve been meaning to write about for weeks – in some cases months – but haven’t managed to tackle properly. In a bid to tidy up a little, here’s a fast round-up of some worthwhile stuff. First off, fairly inevitably, a couple of guitar soli. C Joynes and Nick Jonah Davis are two British players (Joynes is Cambridge-based I think; Davis is described by his label, Tompkins Square, somewhat amusingly as, “A reclusive figure on the Notts music scene.”) both with at least a residual interest in Takoma. Joynes even comes up with a very Fahey-esque title for his latest album (the first I’ve come across), “Revenants, Prodigies And The Restless Dead”, but an experimental imperative means that he brings some newish ideas to a familiarly satisfying stew. Meanwhile, Davis’ album is given the soberly reductive title of “Guitar Recordings Vol 1” and is less expansive, but perhaps slightly superior; Davis has a lovely, bell-like clarity to his playing, which puts him right up there with Tompkins Square’s other 2009 British discovery, Ben Reynolds. A couple more folk-related things worth mentioning. The excellent Numero Group label are persevering with their “Wayfaring Strangers” series of outsider folk recordings that’ve generally been harvested from private press or super-rare ‘70s albums. After the “Guitar Soli” volume from last year, the latest edition is titled “Lonesome Heroes” and features 17 impressively blasted singer-songwriters very much in the Tims tradition. Heavy obscurantism here – I’ve only come across Tucker Zimmerman before, I think – but the standard is pretty awesome. J Tillman is, of course, a bit better known, being the drummer in the Fleet Foxes and an increasingly prolific singer-songwriter in his own right. I’ve never been much of a fan of his previous albums – pretty down-the-line Americana as far as I recall – but “Year In The Kingdom” is nice, thanks in no small part to the spacey, reverberant, marginally ethereal settings Tillman places his songs in. A lot of hammer dulcimer, which I’m not sure will figure in his live show, but we’ll soon find out: Josh Tillman is headlining Club Uncut next week (October 7) at London’s Relentless Garage. One more today. Adam Forkner’s last White Rainbow album, “Prism Of Eternal Now”, was a terrific kosmische jam, with plenty of nods to Terry Riley as well as the usual Krautrock suspects. The follow-up, “New Clouds”, is good, too, with Forkner stretching out into a more maximalist, full-on style that maybe moves him closer – inadvertently, I’m sure – to the likes of Spiritualized at their most immersive. Usefully transporting, though two tracks with the word “boogie” in their titles may be a little misleading…

I’ve been working my way through a shedload of new releases from Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! label this past week or so, including ones from a few Wild Mercury Sound regulars like Sunburned Hand Of The Man with Kieran Hebden and MV & EE, as well as some less familiar things, like Little Claw and a pretty fierce free jam from White Out in the company of Moore and Jim O’Rourke. My favourite, though, is the latest from Hush Arbors, “Yankee Reality”. Keith Wood’s main project is something I’ve written about here a couple of times previously, in a live review of a Club Uncut show from the back end of last year, and in a piece on the last Hush Arbors album on Ecstatic Peace! That record, called “Hush Arbors”, suggested that Wood was gracefully expanding on his fuzzy, avant-folk roots and embracing a more orthodox, though still somewhat other-worldly, tradition of American rock and roots music. “Yankee Reality” compounds that idea in style. Produced by J Mascis (who also contributes some deep riffs and drums), it finds Wood with a full band lineup, moving closer to a rich, rock sound. The folk influences are generally downplayed, and in their place comes a renewed affiliation to classic folk-rock, with “Day Before” and the fantastic “For While You Slept” echoing the dappled jangle of The Byrds. It’s only a partial similarity, for Wood’s thin vocals never try, wisely, any complex harmonies. It’s an endearing voice, a little like his fellow traveller Ben Chasny, but maybe one that stops Hush Arbors from being a really powerful band; listening to “For While You Slept”, there’s a mild sense of frustration that such an excellent song isn’t quite getting the treatment it deserves. But chiefly, “Yankee Reality” works just fine. Some sweet and clever notes that come with the album have been written by James Jackson Toth, and Toth’s latterday albums (as Wooden Wand and under his own name) certainly share a feel; that of two outsider musicians coming in from the wilderness and channelling the more accessible parts of their mighty record collections, maybe. Consequently, “Yankee Reality” features that standby, the exquisite Americana dirge that faintly recalls “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” (“So They Say” here) and another that reminds me of “The Bollweevil Song” (“Take It Easy”). There’s a nice confection of brokeback piano and distantly Motown drums (“One Way Ticket”; check all these artfully cliched song titles, by the way), plus a Mellotron-powered boogie (“Coming Home”) which prompts Toth to suggest, wryly, it “Oughta have the girls in Band Of Horses t-shirts swooning in no time.” Finally, there’s “Devil Made You High”, where the dust gets properly kicked up, there’s a roaring wind tunnel guitar, and the distinct spectres of Dinosaur Jr. J Mascis, perhaps inevitably, didn’t play on that one.

A great line in the press release that comes with this third full album from Espers. “The band attempted to create something that would be perhaps cheery at times,” it reads, “though that mark may have been missed.” “Cheery” is certainly stretching it, but from the start of “III”, it seems like Espers, historically one of the most dirge-favouring – and, just maybe, one of the best – of the acid-folk revivalists , have changed tack a little. “I Can’t See Clear” has a relatively mournful atmosphere – Meg Baird’s lovely voice makes that fairly inevitable – but there’s something akin to jauntiness in the way the song progresses. More of a waltz than a jig, a new lightness of touch is fractionally palpable, a sense that Espers are partially emerging, blinking, from their Philadelphia hedge. On his last solo album, “The Hive”, Espers pivot Greg Weeks turned in a typically funereal version of Madonna’s “Borderline”. Apparently, it was originally planned for an Espers record, but didn’t fit into the aesthetic which was forming. Now “III” is here, you can see why. The hazy folk moods are generally recognisable; the fuzzy, needling riffs from Brooke Sietinson retain that courtly, beguiling take on psychedelia; Baird and Weeks remain an engagingly doleful twin focus. But mostly, the drones have been dropped, so that these songs move at, relatively speaking, a new clip. It’s probably a clever move; in that piece on “The Hive” linked in the previous paragraph, I mentioned how reductive their dronefolk schtick could be; one more album fully committed to that style and maybe Espers could’ve started turning into a kind of hipster All About Eve. Nevertheless, the first half-dozen or so plays of “III” suggest that, while it’s a frequently terrific album, it’s not quite in the same class as “II”, that it’s missing a little of that sustained intensity. Perhaps I’m fussing too much. “III” is a hugely airy and beguiling album, beautifully sequenced: a current favourite passage runs from the prickly, psychedelic instrumental coda of “The Road Of Golden Dust”, through the sparkling duet, “Caroline”, into the Baird-fronted “The Pearl”, a song much in the same, Linda Perhacs-esque vein as the outstanding “Riverhouse In Tinicum” from her solo album, “Dear Companion”. “That Which Darkly Thrives” seems to revert to the gloomy style of “II”, as the title might suggest. But then, the drummer – I’m not sure whether it’s still Otto Hauser – starts playing a kind of breakbeat, of all things, which subtly tips the song off its more predictable axis. “III” is full of nice, clever touches like this. The whole album, the way the strings and guitars are augmented by delicately burbling old keyboards (an analogue to “The Hive”, this), is familiar but refreshed. When they roll into “Another Moon Song”, it even seems as if Espers have taken their traditionally dolorous vibes, their faintly menacing Mellotron, and stuck them onto something like a blues progression, albeit a musty, quasi-medieval one. Then “Colony” starts, and it sounds like it could’ve sat very moodily and effectively on “II”. Possibly some over-nuanced distinctions in this preview, I’m beginning to suspect…