Is it really seven years since the last Cowley Trio release? Well, you can finally scratch that itch, because they’re back – and as mysterious, melancholic and mesmerising as ever.

Entity is an appropriate monicker as the 11-song album unfolds like a single piece of music, elegiac, yearning and imbued with a sense of loss as exemplified in the opening ‘Marble’. If that sounds like a downer, panic not: Cowley’s wit and melodicism remains, but the element of bombast has been filtered out.

What’s left, almost Satie-like in its minimalism and seductive hooks, is as attractive as ever. All the echoey ambience remains from earlier albums, while the tasteful use of electronics, as on ‘V and A’, persists, but is now more seamlessly integrated. We may miss impish romps like ‘She Eats Spiders’, although ‘Adam Alphabet’ has an upbeat, chunky rhythm, but it’s the very integrity of Entity, it’s singularity of mood, that is its strength. Welcome back; a must for fans.