After 25 years, singer and producer Jan Bang releases his second solo vocal album, a sequence of songs with lyrics written by Bang’s long time studio partner (and co-founder of the annual Punkt Festival) Erik Honoré. While the album is suffused with the kind of accreting ambient electronica that Bang and his frequent collaborators Eivind Aarset and Arve Henriksen would suggest it is probably not unfair to describe the music as Art-pop.

There’s a familiar structure to many of the songs and, while Bang’s vocal style is somewhat deadpan, there are some quite jaunty moments, too. Notable is the use of harmony and unison vocals giving a rich texture to the sometimes understated lyrics: ECM artist Simin Tander is especially effective as multi-tracked Sirens woven into the surging electronic waves of the dramatic 'Food For The Journey'.

The album’s title track, however, is a more conventional studio-pop piece, briskly funky over acoustic drums, with an optimistic tone of moving on in life. Possibly the most surprising number is the album’s only cover version: 'Delia', a country and western torch song from the 1950s, respectfully treated to a distant twanging guitar from Aarset over subtly subdued bass and drums. The song’s regretful tone is impeccably served by the vocal combination of Bang with Benedikte Kløw Askedalen, and unsurprisingly it was released as a single before the album.

More menacing, the song ‘War Paint’ simmers into shape, leaden pauses in the vocal suggesting the last breaths of the late artist Bård Breivik who decorated his face in defiance at a terminal illness. The gradual electronic intervention ushers in Henriksen’s distinctively throttled trumpet sound, symbolically fading away.

After a quarter-century of tireless work in the studio and beyond, Reading The Air is an interesting summation of where Jan Bang feels himself to be, not least at the heart of a remarkable concentration of Norwegian musical experimentalists. And, of course, Bang and Honoré’s faultless production is as important to that statement as the music itself, renowned doyens of electronic soundscaping that they are.