As Archipelago begin recording their second album, this 2017 debut is only just surfacing nationally. The Newcastle trio list Don Cherry, the late Mark Sandman’s mordant, Beat-literary 1990s rock band Morphine and Joni Mitchell as influences, showing their free approach to the fringes of jazz and rock. Faye MacCalman is the main composer, with the band then building tracks together, but her versatility as a player is as important, switching from floating, melodic clarinet on ‘Weightless’ to heavier tenor on ‘Red Giant’ (Morphine’s unusual use of sax to give weight to their rock trio sound makes sense as inspiration here). The use of mbira (an African thumb piano) and tape manipulation also fill out sonic explorations sometimes lacking a coherent destination. Archipelago’s highly active, and activist, position in the Northeast’s various underground scenes, when added to their predilection for both heaviness and melancholy (both encompassed by Weightless’s best track, ‘Light Pollution’), make their next move a promising prospect.