There is never a chance that your soul will fail if you always strive to fill your life with positive and all-encompassing emotion. No, that doesn't mean hugging every person, dog or tree you happen upon –although that is admirable; it means embracing the new, the myriad sounds around you, the feelings, the textures of life.

Austel achieve this with exquisite simplicity, wrapped up in the sheer sky-scraping complexity of being and breathing. After collaborations with, amongst others, Lyla Foy, Munro Fox and the rightly venerated Stella Martyr, Annie Rew Shaw [aka Austel] has struck out into the deep blue, soundtracking her deepest hopes and some fears in a beautiful ode to not giving up or in, striving for independence and glorying in the possibility of melody.

Mantra-like in its quiet intensity (‘I don’t have to speak when you don’t’), the ambience slowly takes hold and your eyes, closed to the immediate, flood with images of wings, inky blackness, those dark birds, shot through with shafts of synth and a reassuring back beat, the sunshine penetrating the grey and revealing yellow, a soft illumination - clear light. In the distance – hills, rolling ever onward, a lake so deep, so inviting, so melancholy. Don’t worry, be calm…

As the insistent rhythm takes hold, so does the vocal line, expanding into a multi-layered monster, claws bared then gently withdrawn. There is no violence, no enmity, just a sense of slowly building beauty, yielding to the sky, the brilliant blue – like the clouds opening up to reveal those Crows. Their blackness takes on a lustrous, shimmering sheen, something peculiar yet reassuring. The wisdom is universal, the voices intertwine, the vocal lines meet, you are transported, you have experienced something. You feel renewed and you have Austel to thank.

Hugh Ogilvie.