(Slow
music Movement)A shivering seabed of sound, haunted by barely there vocals and stitched together with lo-fi production – McElroy has made a beautiful early year listen
![Ben McElroy: How I Learned to Disengage From the Pack review | Jude Rogerss folk album of the month](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/68e94825a7e66e00d0417a1f315d4a5d730cc214/0_456_4800_2880/master/4800.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctcmV2aWV3LTQucG5n&enable=upscale&s=8badc427092a0022bd02ede1822bda83)
Ben McElroy first made music as a teenager experimenting with cassette recorders. His adult process may have upgraded to a laptop, but his primary tools remain doggedly lo-fi: accordions in such a state of distress that they fall apart before the end of a song, disintegrating audio equipment, plus well-worn string instruments, whistles and guitars. All often come together to create a shivering seabed of sound: when his barely there vocals appear, as they do on the title track, it evokes a haunting.
How I Learnt to Disengage from the Pack recalls the ambient/indie-folk of groups such as Epic45, with technology adding texture – although McElroy’s tunes are often cast in more traditional clothes. Store Away for a Winters Day features a fiddle pivoting and swooping over a pretty soft drone, while Hedgehogs begins like a piece of 8-bit rural weirdness (carrying hints of the Ghost Box record label’s output) before blossoming into something straighter, but still playful and free. See More engineers webs of bright guitars before the tune turns into a processed, enveloping shimmer – suggesting a dazzle in communion with the natural world – while Wolves Dance yomps with grit on its boots, leading off from a cello towards whistles that create their twisted Celtic lament, accompanied by scattershot hand drums.