Cork guitarist Han-earl Park is the instigator of this debut, and several related free improv outfits, but Belfast-based Scot and sometime folk singer Caroline Pugh dominates. ‘Cliodynamics I’, recorded like most of the album live at London's Cafe OTO, explores her repertoire of private insectile chittering, throttled gargles, whispers, sucks and hisses, while bass and guitar rise and fall gently like downland hills beneath her, or offer their own insect buzz of sawed strings. Pugh's vocal then coheres in ‘Cliodynamics II’ into the beautiful, ascending sound of slow prayers. “You never understand” are her first intelligible words, and the pleasure of stepping outside conventional vocal realms à la Sidsel Endresen is clearest on the closing, studio track, ‘Psychohistory V’, where she barks and roars like a warrior queen. The physicality of a gig would make all this easier to grasp. An hour on record, though, is a doubtful, dissipating pleasure.