Pram

Pram’s chimerical, avant-garde jumble of thrift-shop jazz, celestial funk, vintage electronica and submarine pop has kindled the hearts of music lovers since their genesis in 1990. A Birmingham contingent of aural scholars and nostalgists – whose touchstones evoke sci-fi soundtracks, antique exotica and eerie Victoriana – Pram’s bedazzling, shambling chorales are gratifyingly prosaic and quietly paranormal.

Brightened by frontwoman Rosie Cuckston’s dreamy intonations, and warmly illuminated by lambent horns, arch melodicas, balmy grooves and dawdling arias, Pram’s current (ninth) album, ‘The Moving Frontier’ (Domino), is a quixotic jaunt across moon-mines, silk roads, sun dew, tigers, mariana trenches, silk and sand. It’s a must-have for armchair adventurers who long for a Delphian worlde in their hands.