It’s not often you hear an artist who feels utterly unique from the rest of the music world, and often, when you do, you’ll find something that feels like it’s trying too hard to crowbar too many ideas into one pot, and it all feels like it’s being more of an intellectual exercise rather than one that hits you in the chest.

However, it isn’t always the case and when it goes right – as it does with the new Strawberry Hands LP – you’ll find your hair standing on end and that you’re staggering around the room feeling punch drunk.

On ‘A Jazz Blessing For The Animal’, we find an album that’s almost impossible to fully pin down, even though you’ll feel the echoes of all the best bits of your record collection flooding your head. The lead track, ‘Dream Of Water’ had us thinking about Skip Spence, psychedelic country, Will Oldham, John Martyn, and loads of other great stuff, but the album has a much richer tapestry of sound than simply bedding-in with the loner folk and outsider country bits.

Far richer.

For those who like the gonzo-songwriter approach, then there’s plenty to immerse yourself in, with musically intimate moments seen in ‘Queen’s Gambit Declined’, which has the creeping isolation of solo Syd Barrett at his best, nestled alongside the absolute crushing beauty of ‘You’ll Never See The Goddess Naked’, and the utterly bewitching ‘No Gas’. However, we told you that this wasn’t an album that could be pinned down to one rigid thing, and where the music branches out, you get the real sense that your dealing with a modern classic.

Elsewhere, there’s elements of Post Rock and DIY electronics, and even Kosmiche German rock too, and they knit together with the otherworldly songwriting, so that when it all careers into each other, it doesn’t feel like simply listening to the album is enough, rather, it becomes something physical that you want to plant your whole face into.

‘Nude Aria Pissant’ which kicks the album off chugs along with a left-of-field drum machine and love-worn analogue synths, while the melody of the vocal hovers and weaves through the clicks and washes, counterpointing with each other, while ‘What Plant Jumps Over Me’ shudders and spirals with an expansive rhythm, going through gear changes in one of the most effective, avant garde slices of songwriting you’ll hear all year.

At times, you’re unnerved by the intimacy of the songs, while at other times, it’s a dense, challenging listen, but in both instances, it’s a deeply rewarding experience. It isn’t suffering from trying to be to clever, rather, a completely unique voice and approach to music that has to be applauded.

Fact is, we’re struggling to think of another artist on the planet making music like this, and similarly, we’re hard pressed to think of an album we’ve enjoyed more.

It almost seems reductive to pass this album off as purely experimental and lo-fi – and it is both of those things – but the production feels intentional, the experimentation has purpose. Rather than the usual tropes of DIY music where you might pass the recording off as being made with haste, what you hear on this album almost feels like the degradation of tape you hear on a Boards of Canada record, giving a warmth to tracks that might take a sudden sharp turn at any given point.

Rather than simply focusing on the songs, you begin thinking in terms of palates and moods rather than sticking to the usual tropes of music criticism, as the album hangs delicately between a freeform folk LP, Ambient, Outsider Music, and bedroom electronics. And yet, at the centre of it all, are those interwoven stories and vignettes where words unfurl, in what seems like triple-tracked vocals, pulling you in so close that your blood beats a little thicker. It’s a sensational body of work, truly.

Jacob Brunner, the man behind the moniker, has made a modern masterpiece on ‘A Jazz Blessing For The Animal’ and, while this record may defy simple categorisation, it is absolutely one to get evangelical about. It is a record that should be hurriedly passed around your friends, or one that you’ll put on for someone and you’ll stand over them to make sure they’re listening properly.

All those lost classics, those fringe masterpieces that were forgotten about until some tastemaker gave them their due, like all those single-minded and uncompromising songwriters who feel like unearthed gems from the soil – we chase their private press records and pay through the nose because we didn’t listen the first time ’round, or we weren’t alive when they recorded them.

This is your chance to right those wrongs, and celebrate an artist who is making incredible things right now and needs to be cherished.

This is a type of talent that feels like a complete one-off, with an album that’s a devestating and bruising body of work. This is, without hyperbole, one of the best albums you’ll hear from any period, of any genre.

Essential listening. Get this record by any means possible.

It the shelves September 18th.