Always + Forever is an incredibly cohesive collection from Bristol’s Jabu, and do you have peace? crew. Despite the large number of individual artists involved the set segues together in one dream-like drift. A groovy gong bath, post-bong hit, of ambient washes, birdsong, and cascading chimes. A muted melding of music box loops – sometimes fuzzy, distorted, raising ringing feedback – drones, and snatches of orchestral strings.

The voices are almost exclusively angelic, but distant, as if recorded in the next room. Hermeneia & Zaumne’s In The Soil features an operatic aria. Guest’s Heavy Knot, and Freeze In The Attic, both play, prettily, with Bjork’s Pagan Poetry. Laughter Of Saints’ Shards treats its vocals to a trippy, theremin-like alien vibrato. The ballad as if beamed in from Bebe & Louis Barron’s Forbidden Planet. The resulting ethereal aural atmospheres bring to mind Grouper’s Ruins. However, nothing here is that blue or melancholic. More heavily sedated / stoned. One exception is Static Cleaner Lost Reward, whose Lo-Fi, power /punk pop erudition, on Sweet Paradise, has him coming over like an acoustic Wreckless Eric.

Dub is definitely an influence throughout, and much of the record is rinsed in reverb, drenched in delay. Elements fall away, and on the surface, the songs might seem sparse and stripped back, taken down to bare essentials. Possessing plenty of space. A deep listen, though’ll show, that the sound design is deceptively textured, betraying a good 10, 000 hours, at least, of study, practice, and improv. Only when you’ve mastered something can you be this free.

Most of the cuts on the compilation are clearly a continuation of Bristol’s rich musical history. Tricky and Portishead are jumping off points for their deconstructed soul and R&B. There are also subtle jazz touches, such as Silzedrek’s twisted trumpet tones, on Kristopher Kolumbo Inaction Ark. The cool contrabass at the heart of Jonnine’s As You Sleep By My Side, kinda had me thinking of Factory’s Swamp Children / Kalima, or Rough Trade’s Weekend.

While hazy and hallucinogenic, nearly all of the pieces move to a big bottom end and / or slow shuffling beat. Only Vessel’s contributions – Sleepless and It Can’t Be Helped, the latter a collaboration with Rakhi Singh – buck this trend. Their compositions, characterised by Vessel’s violin, are arrangements of longing, romantic, cinematic themes, and shimmering, blurred percussion. Experiments in modern / post-classicial, rather than music obviously rooted in any rhythmic, bass-based subculture or scene.

Always + Forever is out now, on do you have peace?