Like a pocket calculator:

• I go into standby mode when left in the dark
• My buttons are easily pressed.
• I multiply rapidly.

Well, as they say, two out of three ain’t so bad (as I keep pointing out, I’m not a rabbit). But it is the button-pressing thing I’m going to expand on here, as this new record from Rudi Arapahoe jabs at all the right ones with a well-gnawed but freshly sharpened pencil, with its masterful mix of classical, electronics, field recordings and poetry.

I’ve no idea who he is, and there are few clues to go on in the CD booklet. His grainy, monochrome website doesn’t give much away, and neither does his Myspace – although the latter, with a friend list which includes both Sylvia Plath and Siegmund Freud (I’d love to know what they would have made of the whole Myspace thing), hints at a seriousness and thoughtfulness that the record inevitably betrays. Opening with slowly plucked harp, it quickly gathers a ghostly chorus for “To Gather Flowers”, which fades into poetry, and is then consumed by a black rain. “Dionysian Birds” is a walk through a leaf-strewn forest which has become sodden with memories. The title track weds more of those ethereal vocals to elegiac violin and unsettling crackling electronics; somewhere amongst this a woman’s voice pants in spooked desperation. The use of piano and poetry recalls Max Richter, none more so than on “Last Words Unspoken” and “Lunar Semaphore”, although the latter features a jarring and ominous drone outro.

With Echoes From One To Another, Rudi Arapahoe does an admirable job of summing these disparate elements; I can’t take that away from him. You can take a copy of this record from him via his website, mind.