To help Jack Rollo and Elaine Tierney celebrate 10 years of their NTS radio show, Time Is Away, Efficient Space have released a set, complied by the pair, entitled Searchlight Moonbeam. The collection follows in the footsteps of Julien Dechery and DJ Sundae’s Sky Girl, and Ivan Liechti’s Ghost Riders, two previous Efficient Space records that also play out like mixtapes, and that, from disparate sources, weave a dream-like narrative. 

The mood here is most definitely autumnal. Several of the songs seem concerned with either loneliness, longing, or lost love. Softly strummed, and picked pieces, of fragile, sometimes broken, folk, whose intimate lyrics are often licked by more than a little reverb. This poetry performed in a variety of tongues, including Taiwanese, French, and English. Un’s loose, ramshackle, Fast Money Blues, for example, is Royal Trux, if that terrible twosome did ballads. A post-rock Americana epic. 

The instrumental selections add to, encourage this air. Indian-Australian violinist, Bhairavi Raman, together with Nanthesh Sivarajah on mridangam, brings the romantic, Romany, melancholy of Bittersweet Reflections. A classical chamber composition, that takes on a more Middle Eastern tone, when joined by the rough rhythm of Nanthesh’s  hand drum. From its title, I was expecting O.G. Jigg’s Jesus Is My Jam, to be gospel-tinged gear. Instead, it’s a smokey, syncopated noir, centred on a snake-charming bass clarinet. Combined with some slightly psyche organ it summons scenes of a Turkish bazaar. Leaves the listener momentarily marooned in Marrakech. 

However, not everything on offer is totally “organic” fare. There a also a few electric new wave-edged nuggets. Obscure, underground, cult, unclassics, outsider pop that travels in parallel to Music From Memory’s Uneven Paths. Klang, all cowbell, blues-y riffs, and experimental spoken word, conjure images of notorious 1980s NYC hang-out, The Mudd Club, and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s group, Gray. Soft Location’s `60s girl group-inspired harmonies share something with David Holmes’ work with Raven Violet. Scala, a side-project of the pioneering Seefeel, fuse The Cocteaus, with Jayne Casey’s Pink Military, The Jesus & Mary Chain’s rattling rudimentary programmed percussion, plus a mad Moog-y / Mellotron solo. Gyneongsu sound like Juliana Hatfield fronting The Cure.

There are a couple of covers. Simon Fisher Turner, as The King Of Luxemburg, radically re-imagines Public Image Limited’s Poptones as piano-led, echoed, eccentric, and beatless. Omerta’s Art Of Noise– inspired Moments In Love is one of the LP’s standouts. Sitting somewhere between The Liminanas and Gallic “avant” grail, La Perversita. 

The music on the album bounces backwards and forwards, across multiple decades, centuries even. The closing number is Harry Plunket-Greene’s The Hurdy-Gurdy Man. This Irish baritone staked his claim to fame in the early 1900s, and the track is a haunted dancehall favourite, shrouded in muffled 78 crackle and static. Its spectral presence serves to underline Elaine and Jack’s overriding artistic, aural aim, to sonically synthesise a space free of geography and time. 

Jack Rollo & Elaine Tierney don’s Searchlight Moonbeam is out now, on Efficient Space.