What is it with artists heading off to deserted barns in order to record new material at the moment? Everyone is at it. Adding their names to the ever growing list of musicians who end up hunting earthworms and drinking puddle water as supplies run out and with the recording unfinished are husband and wife Rachel and Xavier Watkins – or Fuzzy Lights.

Perhaps feasting on invertebrates wasn’t actually necessary during their sessions as the music on the EP is actually rather beautiful and touching, suggesting that nothing too traumatic occurred during their Peak District jaunt, but there are some harrowing moments to be found on Helm.

This is an almost ethereal set of songs which are rather hard to stay focused on as they drift across the receptors of the brain – numbing them as they go.

‘Things We Left Behind’ is introduced with a drum beat that bontempi would be embarrassed by such is its the tinny, rudimentary construction. Two seconds in and it’s not looking too good. Such concerns are quickly swept to one side by narcoleptic vocals from Rachel and Xavier that drift along in a daze which is beyond apathetic. Droning keyboards add a further layer of heavy-lidded dozing to proceedings and when sweeping violins are gracefully added into the mix, the oppressive haze becomes all enveloping.

‘Aira’ is a rustic folk song that wouldn’t have sounded out of place had it crept on to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ soundtrack for The Road. Deft finger picked guitars dance around elegant violins as the mood switches constantly between the beautiful and the terrifying. There is something black of heart lurking with the atmospheric wonder of ‘Aira’. It never quite makes itself known but it is almost certainly there.

‘Burn With Light’s’ discordant violins leave no doubt in the mind that there’s something unpleasant going on. No matter how many angelic voices Fuzzy Lights thrown into the mix and how relentless the single repeated motif is, it is all too disturbing to induce the hypnotic state achieved by ‘Things We Left Behind’.

Things are bought to a close with ‘Black Diamond’, which returns to the folkier leanings of ‘Aira’. Rachel Watkins provides a ghostly vocal that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the Wicker Man while the droning violins evoke images of a slowly setting sun, cooling in the waters of the horizon. It’s basic, but enormously effective.

The only problem with Helm is that it is an EP and by the last few notes, the sense that there aren’t more of these evocative soundscapes to immerse yourself in is utterly disappointing – unlike every otherworldly moment of this EP.