Despite its title Welcome To Graceland has nothing to do with a certain Mr Presley, instead, it offers up a shamanistic 'n' often a tranced-out blend of electronica and world music, with lightly surreal and jazzy touches here and there.

The release appears as an eight-track CD on Poland’s Zoharum- been presented in sky blue digipak. This features a multi-coloured cubist cover of a figure,  and inside a good selection of coloured pictures of the three-piece project.

Formed in/ around 2018 Old Castle bringing together the considerable/ impressive talents of Robin Storey (Rapoon, Zoviet France), Robert L. Pepper (Pas Musique), and Shaun Sandor (Promute). The release to hand is the trios second album, with their first been their 2019 self-titled album. I guess if you are familiar with any/ all of these three you’ll have a good idea what to expect, but I must say Welcome To Graceland is a decidedly varied and relatively distinctive second album.

Each of the eight tracks here run between the four and seven-minute mark. We kick off with “Earth Crawlers” which finds a moody and sleek blend of rapid/ tightly pitter-pattering ethnic electronic drums, brooding synth tone atmospherics. All topped with more earthy eastern tinged jazz horn billows and twanging string work.

As we move into the album we come to the glumly darting jazzy piano meet electro hazed textures and tight ticking  ‘n’ stabbing beats of “The Sun At Midnight”. There’s the pulsing electro meets spacey synth texturing burred ethnic trancing of “Sticky Tongue”. Or finally, we have “Mummy Love” with its rising and darkly heady mix of swooning backwards string tones, and lightly surreal electro texturing.

In finishing Welcome To Graceland is a largely effective/ enjoyable cross blend of electronica, light jazz, and ethnic music. Luckily it completely sidesteps all the new age tropes that can be connecting with this mix of genre, to create a largely moodily-at-points darkly surreal sonic ride.