Chris Abrahams / Mike Cooper, Oceanic Feeling – Like (Room 40)

Maybe due to the fact that I spent my childhood living by the sea, when I travel to a landlocked country I become acutely aware of its inaccessibility. Even here in London town it doesn’t feel so bad; it wouldn’t take all that long to get to the Kent or Sussex coast, assuming the ex-Connex train lines weren’t having one of their periodic spazz-outs (note: never suggest to me that Southend-on-Sea is on the sea. It is not. That there water is the filthy great Thames estuary, and no number of piers and grotty arcades will convince me otherwise). That absence was felt on my recent trip to the Czech republic, particularly when trapped on one of their worse-than-Connex train services – the rail replacement bus between Stribro and Kozolupy which caused me no little consternation is likely to remain in place for at least a couple of years, so the weary locals told me. Still, at least I had the new ocean-themed album by Chris Abrahams and Mike Cooper to assuage my various complaints.