Angels Egg 
Wig Smith : A Means Of Escape through a Hedge (UK,2009)****'
This album invited me to listen many times, and even then I didn’t grab all songs for the guitar/ukulele/kora arrangements are so much leading the mood like melody lines they seems to make their own songs, like Pre-Raphaelite paintings and its specific minstrel/almost fairytale area like mood. The strong opener “Frost” is such a song that fits with that area most clearly, a poetic song related with the seasons, with father frost and being like children walking in nature, where its nature’s conditions becomes part of each person and of each thing that happens. The harp-like kora seems to have its own rhythmically singing layer, with a relaxing heart-felt rhythm while the song adds a new layer on top of it and little bits of piano notes are as if they are being plucked in between some of the pickings as if being a few extra strings. This piano introduces the next song, playing playfully mechanically, like in an old time surreal sphere, a barrel organ for some sort of shadowy puppet theatre, until harmonium and amplified guitar are added to the scene. Like in “Ivy”, also the fingerpicking guitar songs have similar to the kora layer, song-like melodious lines, having its own song-lines in the picking swaying in the air, confirming with the extra melody of singing on top, a little bit of independence from the core, a minstrel-like atmosphere. The additional kora elements and arrangements are then dancing around it. The result has this beautiful richness with the colours of a lucid dream. On “Sprigging him with tansy” the harmonium adds a dramatic tension, while the kora makes it lighter, the voice like the sum of instruments ranges from melancholy to happy feelings, once more I’m inside the paintings. “Rosie” is a folk-bluesier guitar picking song, with a bit of echo on the voice, and a nice humming arrangement. Each song really adds new flavours and elements, like subtle changes. A nice additional element are some clarinet arrangements and beautiful dual vocals with Rachel Dadd on “Bellow’s Song”. This clarinet you can hear on “Keeper of the Swans” as well. “Three-cliffs” songs might also refer to the three picking techniques used in the song, of slide effects on guitar, ukulele and kora, a beautiful combination. A keeper.
