Diving into Ben Chasny’s world, you take a risk. Will you be freaked out, appalled or annoyed at what you find? Or will you be enlightened, envigorated or even entertained? The outcome, as with every artist’s body of work, depends partially on what you bring to the table in terms of openness, attention, time and personal circumstances. But one thing that can be guaranteed is that you won’t be bored.

Chasny’s psych-folk project Six Organs of Admittance has been one of the more prolific (see here, here or here for evidence) outfits in the last few years, and Asleep on the Floodplain, his seventh release in five years, is of the high standard we’ve come to expect, and yet is a bit more playful than a lot of his older output.

‘Above a Desert I’ve Never Seen’, for example, sounds in places like a casually tossed-out finger picking exercise, but the way it combines short, memorable licks with the incessant percussive twang of steel strings is very Chasny-esque. His vocals are still what I imagine the lovechild of Devendra Banhart and Iron and Wine’s Sam Bean to sound like, and in ‘Hold But Let Go’, the most conventionally pleasant and catchy song of the album, there is a very distinct touch of the latter’s country folk. It’s a beautiful track, with a naturalistic warmth and conciseness that you don’t necessarily associate with Six Organs of Admittance .

The triple whammy of ‘River of my Youth’, ‘Poppies’ and ‘Sword and Leviathan’ constitute the more atmospheric (or drone-y) aspect of the record. Feedback creeps in and out of earshot, piano keys are tapped on and Chasny wrings some more riffs out of his acoustic, before in the last of the three tracks, it all goes a bit free-for-all-jam-orgy.

Asleep… is, overall, a very measured and thoughtful record, with more than enough left jabs to your musical blind spot, but also with some assured melodic moments of peace. Lovely stuff.