Whether it’s been Orion Rigel Dommisse’s terrifying bad seed lullabies infiltrating our fragile minds at night and warning us of the dangers of encountering girls who wear pretty-as-a-doll dresses whilst wandering the woods alone, or the claustrophobic intimacy of Ilya E Monosov’s scratch in the ear whisperings, or Ex Reverie’s Renaissance Faire maiden musings potent head on collision with King Crimson heaviosity, since they began spreading their direct-from-the-forest-floor word the folks at Language Of Stone, led by the very good Greg Weeks of Espers, their hands dirtied up with the remnants of rotten leaves and clay have clawed their way into our swollen hearts.

Silver Summit are the latest two to creep and nest inside our dark chambers who arrive with an all encompassing aura of hushed solemnity, of explorers who having travelled through unforgiving forests haunted by ancient evils surrounded by the cacophonous noises made by animals birthed for sacrifice and trees lamenting in harsh winds their putrid open wounds tormented by the crawling of ants, found their freedom in a peaceful clearing hidden away in amongst the chaos, a place where their mind’s eyes were allowed to wander to their heart’s content and where their brains fragmented and became one with the light that lurks between the leaves. Tinkering with all manner of exotic artefact, their ghostly drone folk is imbued with a phantom metal sensibility, the harsh sonics replaced with swathes of intoxicating psyche melody that enter into the body with serpentine grace and menace, whilst a voice that plays with it’s listener like a black cat playing with it’s prey bewitches and grips, the kind of grip you hope will never loosen.

Silver Summit – In-Between Place

He has nothing to say, he walks alone, far away from the others.

And so as the sun begins to retreat inside his cave for another year, and the trees prepare to die once more, shed their splendour and wait to be reborn in six months time, join us in a glittering, decadent storm of gold and auburn as we waltz our way around dreamlike rococo ballrooms that have no end with elegant elder women who weep for reasons unknown and seemingly hover like spirits in gowns of pearl, while the music of Gérard Manset plays on a continuous loop and in the gentlest way possible tears us from the inside out.

Gérard Manset – Ils

Often referred to as the French Scott Walker, fewer things in this cosmos of ours sound more beautiful, more heartbreaking than Manset and his cinematic strolls through the epic. On “Ils” when a choir of sad-eyed angels begins to intone over strings that should leave no dry eye in the house, that sound you’re hearing is actually the sound of a hundred crystal hearts shattering into tiny pieces that no one will ever be able to put back together again.