Mancunian guitarist Stuart McCallum’s third solo album finds him building on and expanding the aesthetic he’s helped to develop as part of Jason Swinscoe’s longstanding trip-hop outfit, The Cinematic Orchestra. That means lush, orchestral samples, languid grooves and a sophisticated facility for channelling the chill-out properties of cosmo-spiritual jazz masterpieces such as Alice Coltrane’s Journey in Satchidananda through a secular, 21st century familiarity with electronica and dance music. Like Swinscoe, McCallum seems to have an instinctive feel for epic arrangements with an expansive sweep – following a lineage that runs from David Axelrod’s iconic late-1960s, Blake-inspired suites, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, through Jean-Claude Vannier’s definitive contributions to Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson, and right up to DJ Shadow’s update on the whole idea from the mid-1990s onwards. But McCallum brings a novel twist to the concept, by grounding it subtly yet very firmly in his geographical roots – that is, the north west of England. Tracks like ‘Lament for Levenshulme’ (named after an inner-city area of Manchester) conjure the city’s iron-grey skies and rain-soaked, redbrick terraces – as seen through the steam of a cosy cup of hot, sweet tea – with a kind of rueful melancholy. Throughout, there’s a modest avoidance of showy solos, though there’s little doubt McCallum could scorch them out if he was inclined to do so. Instead, he pursues a patient preoccupation with texture, shading and colour – and pretty much invents Mancuniana in the process.