In a word - mesmerising. Debut release - we think - from Anglo French musician Fran Rodgers - recorded and produced by a certain Richard Green of Somantics and Ultrasound fame - so as you can imagine this has a certain amount of pedigree even before the stylus has hit the grooves. These three cuts sound like they were crafted in another era long since past, in fact if we didn't know better we'd swear they were recently unearthed and hitherto un-catalogued fabled curiosities from the late 60's Cambridge folk scene reverentially referred to in hushed tones by an avid well informed small circle of record collectors who glow feverishly at its mere mention believing its existence over the years to be more myth than actual reality. Adrift and buoyed upon a bed of ebbing and flowing cascading pastoral fretwork, Rodgers soothes, seduces and serenades the would be listener none more so than on the eerie summers evening breeze that lifts into view the elegiac 'to long no more' - possibly the best thing here mainly for its mercurial patchwork of Brian Jones like codas. As the debut as a whole - ghostly transfixing folk casked, sealed and left to ferment, Rodgers vocal hovers and arcs breezily and breathlessly like a sensual apparition softly entwined and in union with the timeless tuneage within, the obvious reference points lie with Joni Mitchell though the sparse richly woven and free spirited textures perhaps allude more to Vashti Bunyan, Susan Christie, Sandy Denny and Lucie Wren whose debut recent debut release for Sacred Harp Library had us positively bewitched - nonetheless irrefutably dwelling in domains more commonly associated with Joe Boyd. Rodgers toys with the enduring appeal of the lightly peppered rustic codas found amid the 'Wicker Man' - 'I fell to you under winter sun' with its haunting caress of passionately laboured pangs is immersed sweetly in dream filled montages of frail rustic landscapes that tease, tempt and touch. With its keyboard florets the unassuming and tranquil though hurting whisper of the parting 'she dwelt among th'untrodden ways' is a thing of such steely eyed calm that one suspects the hardiest of souls will fall headlong into its beckoning folds. A serenely sensual folk classic in the making.

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