Who Is This Who Is Coming

Suffolk-based rustic psych-rockers The Future Kings Of England offer on their fourth album the soundtrack for a creepy ghost story written in 1904 by MR James, in which a sceptical professor has his certainties rattled when he finds a Bronze Age whistle and with it summons up… who knows what? A ghost? Evil spirit? Teasingly, the written extracts never fully explain, which is all to the good. Save for a few brief lines in two tracks, it's entirely instrumental, the band skilfully blending the bucolic with the eerily industrial into a vivid series of doomscapes. They stray at times into boggy progginess, but at their best ("The Globe Inn", "Convinced Disbeliever") they have the steady, unhurried manner of Pink Floyd en route to some grand epiphany.

John Abercrombie Quartet: Up and Coming Starting the new year with, if not precisely a bang, a nevertheless unforgettable record whose strength lies in pristine lyricism, nuanced group interplay and writing that capitalizes on the entire quartet's appreciation of subtlety over gymnastics and refined lyricism over angularity, John Abercrombie's Up and Coming—ECM's first release of the year—is also founded strongly on the concept of relationship. The guitarist has been playing with Marc Copland since the pianist's days in the early '70s as a saxophonist before deserting it entirely for a career and discography that's as rich and rewarding as Abercrombie's…