The last solo Tim Hecker was such a favourite round here that pressing play on his latest filled me with a vertiginous mixture of excitement and trepidation. Crom only knows what I’d feel like if I ever did something genuinely thrilling or dangerous, like bungee jumping or hang-gliding or buying shares in a bank, I’d probably just explode in a flash of giddy panic.

The first thing that needs to be said about Tim Hecker’s imaginary country is that it is a very lovely place indeed, pretty much all the way from the opening blurry smear of mellotron “100 Years Ago” to its closing counterpart “200 Years Ago“. Soaked into the grains is a emotionally uplifting fluidity. Tracks swell woozily, with hazy charred guitar smoke curling through thickets of churchy-sounding drones. At times it feels like I’m getting married while high on opiates (a typical Valentines day round my way, then), a vague and wondrous feeling of bliss. If there are any jagged edges, I’m not snagging on them: while Harmony In Ultraviolet was prone to violent lurches from calm to stormy waters, An Imaginary Country plots a more focused course. Only on the penultimate track, the epic “Where Shadows Make Shadows” does this halcyonic state show sign of corruption, with dark clouds of billowing distortion looming on the horizon.

Criticising An Imaginary Country for lack of ambition, or indeed a lack of progression from Hecker’s previous work, would be to do it some disservice. You won’t hear as many records this year as beautiful as this; pressing play for the second time fills me with the same sense of anticipation as the first.

An Imaginary Country is released on Kranky on 23 March.