British artist/musician Richard Skelton, aka A Broken Consort, started the Sustain-Release Private Press four years ago, releasing his music alongside his late wife Louise’s artwork. The resulting handmade editions are gorgeous — tiny wooden boxes, thick paper, leaves, rocks, pine cones. He’s recorded under names like Heidika, Carousell, Harlassen and Clouwbeck and is about to release his second A Broken Consort album A Box Of Birch on the U.S label, Tompkins Square. It initially came out as an edition packed with birch twigs collected from Lancashire’s West Pennine Moors. In a similar vein, the new version will include artwork by Skelton investigating, to quote his label, “the hidden histories of the English landscape, and their narratives of displacement and loss.” Even without any of that, though, his layers of guitars, strings, piano, etc., are mesmerizing. Once you add the backstory and the passing thought of a A Box Of Birch as a coffin, the chills double.

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