Flock is still very clearly a Jane Weaver album, rooted in the influences that informed Modern Kosmology and its predecessor The Silver Globe: the ghost of Brummie experimentalists Broadcast haunts opener Heartlow the rhythmic pulse that underpins Modern Reputation owes a clear debut to krautrock pioneers Neu! the title track opens with glimmering chimes and a mass of flute samples that wouldn’t sound out of place on Weaver’s acid-folk inspired album The Fallen By Watch Bird. So what is it that Weaver has felt emboldened to do? Listening to Flock, the answer seems to be: make a pop record, although it’s worth noting immediately that such assessments are relative. Whatever you make of its roster, however, it seems unlikely to be the kind of label where A&R men pound tables and demand artists curb their wilder impulses and come up with something for Spotify’s Teen Party playlist.
Until recently, her releases came out on Manchester label Finders Keepers amid reissues of 60s Czechoslovakian film soundtracks, French free jazz so obscure the musicians who made it struggle to remember when and where they did so, and mid-70s musique concrète. She has lightly brushed against the mainstream – Coldplay sampled her track Silver Chord on 2014’s Ghost Stories the title track of her last album, Modern Kosmology, turned up on the soundtrack of Killing Eve and the album itself made the lower reaches of the charts – but, for the most part, her career has played out in the leftfield, the better to indulge her esoteric music tastes, which currently run to “Lebanese torch songs, 80s Russian aerobics records and Australian punk”.