Sam Howard – AKA Halls – unleashed his debut LP, Ark, back in 2012 to rave reviews, comparisons to Thom Yorke and commendations from Burial. Choirs and chapels and churches various other religious things beginning with ‘ch’ sprang to mind in an instant (ooh – cherubs!), despite Howard’s assurance that there’s nothing religious about his music. It was a gossamer anthology of modern-day hymns, pinpricked with a soupçon of post-dubstep particles and impassioned elegies, defined as much by Howard’s gorgeous array of vocal nuances as the sanctimonious (yet secular) soundscapes he was sculpting.

For his follow-up, some 18 months later, the London producer hasn’t entirely stripped Halls of that aura. Love To Give sees an enlightened evolution. It’s grander, more organic, considerably more akin to Sigur Rós than, say, James Blake, and perhaps most crucially, it embodies a different kind of spirituality. The former record was decisively ecclesiastical, solemn and sparse; Love To Give, while those sonic caverns and emaciated textures linger, occasionally slips into thundering post-rock colonies. It lurches from urban decay, greyscale sprawl and the mundanity, the drabness of metropolitan life, into the wilderness. It’s rammed with arcadian epicness. Instead of insistently conjuring existentialist futility (as fantastic as it was), Howard summons visions of escaping to the Irish or Scandinavian sticks, scouting remote locales to gawp in awe at the world, the sky, the sea, the sunrise. It’s a staggeringly beautiful advancement.

“Forelsket” – meaning ‘love’ in Norwegian – is the lead single. Already, in the opening moments, you can grasp his aural advancements. There’s a faint pop in his vocals as they tremble. Angst-riddled axes shimmy behind slomo bass plucks; the percussion is distinctively huge like Do Make Say Think or similar ilk. It retains an optimism, reaching for wisps of sunlight amongst the swarms of fuzz and strange free-jazz breakdown. It’s not just “Forelsket” that hosts unusual instrumentation – “Aria”, in it’s grandiosity, fuses calypso marimbas, Kveikur-esque guitars and lilting violins. The 50-second effort “Harmony In Blue” is a lo-fi acoustic ballad. Howard’s taken big steps to ensure his new record doesn’t sit too close to his prior’s timbre.

There are some similarities however: “Waves” is overwhelmingly religious sounding. It’s a different method, with gospel organs, shimmering zither sounds and shuffling beats – it’s considerably more aggressive, more frustrated – but it retains the atmosphere Howard painstakingly whittled on Ark. The title number and opener “Love To Give” is a scratchy, scrape-y, hold-your-breath opus that seems to represent a transition in the sound. It begins innocuously enough, as a brooding lament straight from the deleted scenes of Halls’ debut, but gradually evolves into a brass-tinged anthem of resolute hope. It’s inspiringly deluded – that never-say-die, one-last-try heroism that, no matter how ridiculous, is noble.

Love To Give is exquisite ambiance, requiring undivided attention – not because it’s especially complex, though it’s certainly not a facetious hunk of glossy façades, but because it’s a sacred pilgrimage, necessitating respect. Give it that, and your soul will be greatly rewarded. Where Ark was built from the ground up as an introspective, dark, indoors album, Love To Give is too cramped in those shackles. It belongs outside, in rustic dells and feral glades and the eternal Russian taiga. It, like Ark, is innately personal and solitary, but instead of squirrelling itself away into confined nooks, it pines for adventure, and lusts for cleansing isolation.