Samana’s music has always been inspired wide open spaces. The nature and landscapes the duo, Rebecca and Franklin Mockett have experienced while travelling and touring. Samana, and the couple’s relationship, actually began on the road, when they impulsively pooled their money and spent a year exploring Europe in an old van named Govinda. Samana’s second long-player, All One Breath, featured the photographs of Mike Brodie, who spent 4 years jumping freight trains and documenting the lives of modern day hobos. Their eponymous, third album, however, takes its eyes off the horizon and instead is a deep dive inside. The set contains 9 songs, inspired by Rebecca’s dream diary. Rebecca refers to her dreams as “My guide in the darkness and my ride through the light.”

Recorded in Samana’s studio in rural Wales, housed in a cottage which they refurbished themselves via traditional techniques, the production and playing continues to display an intimacy and tightness that reflects the pair’s incredible bond. The songs like some healing ceremony conducted by soulmates. Lost in each other and shielded from the often negative distractions of the outside world by their love and the act of creation. This is the root of their music’s pure, primal power.

Some of the pieces still centre around Franklin’s guitar dexterity and Rebecca’s bewitching octave-leaping voice. The strumming, picking, snatches of bottleneck slide, and haunting hymn-like quality conjuring a kind of cosmic folk.  The bass is always bold, warm, womb-like and reassuring. The reverb, rich, exuding a glow. A result of all the vintage analogue gear, and a studio designed according to the “golden ratio”. Even when the songs are pared down to these basics they sound epic. However, orchestral strings now accompany many of the new numbers. Ambitious arrangements, that don’t simply soar, but provide sharp, dramatic punctuation. Recalling the genius of Jean-Claude Vannier. The Infinite, for example, is practically symphonic, operatic in the way that it by turns quietly swoons and then booms. This track also introduces choir-like backing and brass, both of which echo the soundtracks of Ennio Morricone.

None of the songs simply fade. All have defined arcs. A beginning, middle and end. Each has its own individual narrative but they also collectively map an internal journey. Progressing through restlessness, a need to escape the past, escape the city. A need to keep moving. Resisting, fiercely fighting, before finally succumbing to nostalgia’s shadows and a melancholy mood. You know how sometimes, despite your best intentions, the nagging blues’ll wear you down.

Near the start of this trip, The Knife, in an act of insurrection, suddenly erupts in a full-on space-rock freakout. Effects pedals a-go-go. Cathartic and chaotic. Shattering Samana’s acoustic shackles. The piano-led We Will Find A Way, conversely, is the calm after the storm. Its title repeated like a soothing, positive mantra. On Into The Wild Rebecca whispers “I feel the night wrap around me” as she surrenders to the temptation of the dark. Seven Years finds her painfully crawling, trawling through memories.

Listening to The Dark Angel I picture a protagonist, stoic, perhaps doomed, hiding out somewhere isolated, knowing that violent retribution will one day come. The closing Preselis, named after the Pembrokeshire range of mountains and hills, builds from drones to a Celtic rebel march. The lyric’s hook of “Lay the body down” marking a climatic spiritual resurrection.

Samana is out now on The Road Records. Samana’s live gigs have been likened to shamanic healing ceremonies. If you’re in the UK you can experience this first hand as they’re about to embark on a short tour:

Nov 1, ARK, Margate

Nov 8, The Rose Hill, Brighton

Nov 9, The Old Church, Stoke Newington

Nov 11, The Mount Without, Bristol

Nov 12, Newport Memorial Hall, Pembrokeshire

Nov 13, St Laurence’s Church Hall, Stroud District