Album number six from Gwyn Herbert is so chock full of delights that you're reaching for the repeat button even as the reprise of the delicately floating ‘Sea Theme’ draws to a close. In the magical middle eight of ‘Sweeter’, the off-kilter rhythms of ‘Alderney’, the ghostly fiddle glissandos of ‘Plenty Time For Praying’, and the menacing percussion and slightly askew guitar riffing of ‘Drink’, Herbert channels everything from Kate Bush to Kurt Weill with all points in between. We get dramatic torch songs (‘I Still Hear The Bells’, one of several duets with Fiona Bevan) and modern-day sea shanties (‘The King’s Shilling'), before the album hits its high-water mark with the utterly wonderful ‘Promises’, in which textural layers gradually accrue from finger picked guitar to a chamber orchestral sweep. Not so much ploughing her own furrow as plotting her own course, The Sea Cabinet is one of the most beguiling collections of songs you'll hear this year.

Jazzwise spoke to Gywneth Herbert about the album

So what's with the sea theme?

I've always been fascinated by the sea, as an artistic muse, but also, specifically, the idea of the coast. That idea of ‘in-between’ spaces, neither quite the sea nor the land. The album was borne out of a song cycle written as part of an artist residency at Snape Maltings. I did a gig at the Snape Proms a couple of years ago and Jonathan Reekie, the creative director, said ‘we love what you do’. They gave me a cottage on the sea front in Aldeburgh for a week in January: blowing a gale, hailstorms, completely deserted, and I wrote the bulk of the album in that week.

What's the story about?

The woman who forms the basis of the prose story by Heidi James that runs through the live version is a disenfranchised, dislocated character – a social outcast, really. Every day she gathers all of these things that she finds on the beach and logs them with archaeological rigour in a ledger.

What will the live version look like?

It's kind of massive. We've just been talking to the choir. It's going to be a multisensory extravaganza.

Five different pianists – that's just being greedy isn't it?

The album is quite epic in scope in terms of instrumentation. I love working with multi-instrumentalists. I had the sonic tapestry in my head. In ‘Alderney’, for example, I knew immediately that I wanted that to be on accordion. Fundamentally, the album's about storytelling, so every detail is colouring the story.

How is the crowdfunding going?

I'm really enjoying it, actually. Rather than asking people to give something for nothing, I'm giving them packages and that's a really nice way of engaging with people. I've already started writing some of the commissioned songs.