Album: Here We Go Magic, Here We Go Magic (Western Vinyl)

Now trading as one-man band Here We Go Magic, Luke Temple has broadened his approach to accommodate a range of effects and influences that add intriguing new slants to his songs.

There's more than a hint of Vampire Weekend's preppy Africana flavours to some tracks, particularly "Only Pieces", which leads the album off with an enticing thumb piano and percussion loop, which, added to Temple's Paul Simon-esque vocal timbre, lends the song a strong Graceland feel, perfectly aligned with its recurrent query, "What's the use in dying, dying, if I don't know when?" The damped guitar figure of "Ahab", meanwhile, has a distinct Tinariwen feel, subtly blended with the track's sleek falsetto harmonies and miasmic keyboard washes. Temple's folk-rock roots are more in evidence in the jangly guitars and multi-tracked harmonies of "Tunnelvision", "I Just Want to See You Underwater" and "Fangela", but elsewhere "BabyohbabyIjustcan'tstanditanymore", "Nat's Alien" and "Ghost List" reveal another side entirely to his music, with a series of ambient washes, E-bow shimmers and electronic tones whose static industry imposes a darker mood over parts of the album.

Download this: 'Only Pieces', 'Fangela', 'I Just Want to See You Underwater', 'Ahab'