Mandrake Handshake - Earth-Sized Worlds

Mandrake Handshake's debut album creates its own gravitational field. 'Earth-Sized Worlds' floats through the consciousness like a warm breeze on a cosmic beach, where the sand sparkles with stardust and the waves crash in perfect 4/4 time. This Oxford-based collective have crafted an album that manages to be both background beautiful and intellectually engaging, even if it occasionally threatens to drift off into the stratosphere.

The seven-to-ten-piece outfit (depending on who's free for rehearsal) have mastered the art of the gentle build, creating arrangements that unfold like time-lapse footage of blooming flowers. Their self-dubbed 'Flowerkraut' sound – a clever mashup of floral psychedelia and motorik precision – finds its fullest expression yet across these nine tracks. Opening number 'Time Goes Up' sets the template: shimmering guitars, hypnotic rhythms, and Trinity Oksana's vocals floating somewhere between Earth and orbit.

The production throughout is immaculate, with every instrument finding its own pocket in the mix. This is particularly evident on 'Charlie's Comet', where David Howard-Baker's saxophone weaves through guitar lines like a celestial serpent, while 'The Change and The Changing' demonstrates the band's gift for making complexity feel effortless.

If there's a criticism, it's that the album maintains such a consistent atmosphere that individual tracks occasionally blur together. The vocals, while beautifully textured, tend to prioritise mood over message, making lyrics difficult to decipher. But perhaps that's the point? This is music that invites you to sink into it rather than dissect it.