Black Hearted Brother - Stars Are Our Home (2013)

This trio features former Slowdive and Mojave 3 member Neil Halstead, a one-time member of psychedelic country band Coley Park called Nick Holton and Seefeel’s Mark Van Hoen. With Slowdive’s break-up in the mid-’90s and Halstead’s subsequent transition from shoegaze pioneer to alt.country crooner, there’s been a hope that he’d one day return to his dream-pop roots. ‘Stars Are Our Home’ isn’t that, but there are shades of his past on the twinkling, self-titled opening track and ‘(I Don’t Mean To) Wonder’, which are layered with reverb-drenched vocals buried deep in the mix. Elsewhere this space-fixated album offers more electronic and ambient sounds, such as the beeps and glitches of ‘This Is How It Feels’.