The Gyil is a xylophone specific to northern Ghana and neighbouring regions, the buzz of spider-silk-screened holes in the gourds beneath its resonant wooden keys making this London band's use of it sonically distinct. Bex Burch's immersive apprenticeship in the instrument is Vula Viel's foundation, and on this second album she finds room to progress within its rigid funeral rite structures, singing her own lyrics while bassist Ruth Goller and drummer Jim Hart extend its subtly strange grooves. Producer Matt Calvert is meanwhile key in the skeletal dub and raw attack of opener ‘Well Come’, and the title-track's limpid minimalism. ‘I Love You’ explicates a spiritual philosophy of benign balance and contrast, drawn from both Burch and her instrument's lore. ‘Fire’ instead creates visual impressions, as it rudely shoves its sounds to the limit. Burch has called the sacred wood from which her Gyil is made “witchy”, and the track's switch from angelic vocals to harrying howls conjures women circling gleefully in eldritch skies. Goller has spoken of the hair-tearing limitations of the Gyil's minor pentatonic scale, and a third, harmonically richer record has just been recorded, with Hart playing a drum custom-built on his own Ghana trip. Burch's journey through her instrument's implications has committed company.