Jono Aidney serves up a meticulously crafted collection of songs here. It’s been in gestation for a while, and it’s obvious that a lot of care has been taken in the songwriting and the production, as well as the artwork and the cleverly not-quite-hidden messages in the CD booklet. The guitar tones are sometimes as heavy as a pyroclastic flow, but never overwhelm the well-constructed melodies. At other times the songs are ethereal and dreamlike, the multi-talented Aidney playing everything bar the drums. There’s a tint of melancholy to some songs, befitting their serious and confessional nature.

As previously reported in this fine periodical, Quail State spent time in Portland where he found that people in the music scene, “shared this idea that music could really be an art form”. Which helps explain why the album launch was a combined listening party/art show, and tells you something of the level of conceptualism at work here. Artist, musician, volcanologist: Quail State has his fingers in many pies but he’s happy to share those pies with you so that you may discover new flavours.