‘Building a shell, worn out!  Fight! Compromise! A wireless passion without the hidden cost, Take it from them so that we may richly live again’ (Compromise!)

Me Lost Me is the DIY folk project of Jayne Dent and her most recent album, RPG, was an intriguing electro-folk exploration of the increasingly blurred lines between the virtual and the actual.  On this, her follow-up and fourth full-length, This Material Moment, she has retained the fundamentals that shaped RPG but realised them with an even more assured boldness.

Dent’s powerful vocals, graced with their distinctive North East cadence, remain at the heart of proceedings, sweeping from the haunting ethereal to the stridently melodic with a seamless ease.  Indeed, the unaccompanied Vanishing Point is a mournfully arresting highlight.  The impact of her vocals is elevated still further by their deft layering with those of her co-conspirators.  This is, perhaps, most evident on the acapella of A Souvenir, but is braided throughout the album and works particularly vividly on the stirring eruption of Compromise.

The instrumentation is rich yet subtly understated.  Dent’s own glitching electronics are laced through the haunting arrangements of clarinet, double bass, and percussion.  This restraint creates an atmosphere that is equally imbued with reflection and drama, not least when the band’s full power is unleashed, as on the thumping Ancient Summer.  This oscillating pattern is mirrored in the fractured, allusive lyrics as they draw on natural imagery and our sensory experiences to explore how we can stay true to ourselves in a world that seeks to absorb us all into its relentlessly draining, ever less satisfying cycle of extraction.