Album: Seventeen Evergreen

With Life Embarrasses Me On Planet Earth, Seventeen Evergreen bring an intriguing new slant to Eno's notion of "nostalgia for the future" , sketching a world in which disillusion with mankind is tempered by a lingering hope of cosmic salvation. Adopting a slow, contemplative pace throughout the album, the San Francisco-based duo of Caleb Pate and Nephi Evans employ gossamer sheets of keyboards, strings and ebow guitars to evoke the awed, weightless wonder of space travel in a manner that has affinities with the less bombastic side of Pink Floyd.

But the apparently blissful tone hides darker fears of cosmic danger, with "Constellation" warning of alien mental infestation, and "Lunar One" offering a rumination on the mystery and solitude of space travel that's like a furtive extension to 2001 and "Space Oddity", as another astronaut succumbs to madness: "With lunar ideas he got lost/ With pinball eyes and lots to see". The album's other-worldliness recalls Midlake's Trials of Van Occupanther, only with the time-machine set for the future rather than the past.

Download this: 'Lunar One', 'Haven't Been Yourself', 'Constellation', 'Ensoniq'