While the latest issue of Uncut was turning up in the UK last week, I was a long way from “Basement Tapes” frenzy, on holiday in Athens. I saw all the classical sites, accidentally walked into both a Tino Sehgal performance piece and a NATO delegation, and also, true to form, found time to do a little record shopping. My trip proved to be well-timed, as these past few weeks I’ve been playing a couple of new albums, by Xylouris White and Rhyton, that are rooted to greater and lesser degrees in the music and culture of Greece. Xylouris White’s “Goats”, which came out last month, is a collaboration between Jim White, the Dirty Three’s dextrous Australian drummer, and a Cretan lute player called George Xylouris. It begins with a track called "Pulling The Bricks", and the kind of rolling explosions that White has long deployed so effectively: a big man behind a small kit who draws on the tumble of free jazz in an unusually subtle way, so that his rhythm patterns are consistently inventive without ever detracting attention from whoever he’s playing with (in the past: Cat Power, Will Oldham, PJ Harvey, Bill Callahan). Soon enough, though, it’s Xylouris’ lute that takes the lead, a complex and prickly sound embedded in the folk music of his home, but with an inquisitive spirit that moves into wider and more esoteric circles. Xylouris is from a village called Anogeia, poetically situated just down the hill from the Cave Of Zeus, and is part of a family of musicians who, it transpires, have a critical role in the Greek music of the past 50 years. In a shopping arcade just round the corner from Athens’ central square, Syntagma, I found the Xylouris record shop, mainly dedicated to the memory of George’s uncle, Nikos. Most things I’ve read on the internet call Nikos Xylouris, who died in 1980, the Archangel Of Crete, and mention that he played a significant role in bringing down the Greek military government in the late ‘60s – though I can’t work out exactly what that role was (Wikipedia mentions it, predictably, with one of those “Citation Needed” glosses). If anyone can enlighten me, I’d be really interested to hear from you. Anyhow, Nikos Xylouris’ widow was working in the shop when I turned up and, after I mentioned the Xylouris White album, she guided me to an album called “Antipodes 2” that George made fronting his Xylouris Ensemble, released in 2002. It collects recordings made in Australia in the 1990s with a bunch of local, predominantly Celtic musicians, though the music is gorgeous and solemn – more so than the slightly friskier “Goats” – and closer, to at least my neophyte ears, to tradition. In the sleevenotes, even back then, there’s an acknowledgement for the Dirty Three; one of the ensemble is Xylouris’ wife, Shelagh Hannan, an old friend of White. When I first heard the Xylouris White album, it struck me as a brilliant extension of the Dirty Three’s romantic aesthetic, with Xylouris taking the dramatic starring role normally occupied by Warren Ellis. Now, though, I wonder whether, to some degree, Xylouris and his family actually influenced The Dirty Three, especially when Ellis plays bouzouki rather than violin. White and Xylouris have only been playing together since an ATP hook-up in 2009, when a Nick Cave-curated festival lineup placed them both alongside Xylouris’ father, Psarantonis. This music, though, is obviously imbued with a history that’s both ancient and modern, and I’d love to learn more, if anyone has recommendations for me. “Goats”, incidentally, is produced by Guy Picciotto, who I wish would make some music of his own again: maybe the CD release of Fugazi’s first demo tape might be a sign of re-engagement (though I’d happily settle for a Rites Of Spring reunion, too)? There’s a great interview with Xylouris, White, Picciotto and the film-maker Jem Cohen (who directed the clip below) at The New Yorker. Strongly recommended. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQipk3cH-SI As is this new album by New York’s Rhyton; a rhyton being an elaborate Greek drinking vessel, as I discovered in the National Archaeological Museum the other day."Kykeon" begins with 80 seconds of needling guitar noise, but soon coalesces into a much more satisfying, Aegean-inflected jam session. Bouzouki/saz/guitar player Dave Shuford has form here: besides his work with the No-Neck Blues Band (semi-feral improv) and fronting D Charles Speer & The Helix (rowdy bar-room Americana), 2011's solo set, "Arghiledes", was ostensibly a study of Greek folk music. On "Kykeon" (it's an intoxicating ancient Greek drink, apparently), Shuford and his bandmates, Jimy SeiTang and Rob Smith, combine that knowledge with freewheeling homeland psychedelia. "Gneiss" and "Pannychis" are notable highs, imbued with a wiry funk that connoisseurs of Anatolian psych will find recognisably potent. Again, see what you think… Follow me on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JohnRMulvey

One more diamond day: an elusive singer-songwriter's beautiful, last (probably) album... Vashti Bunyan doesn’t do hurried. This is the woman who, famously, turned her back on life as an aspiring pop starlet in late '60s London to spend the best part of a year travelling to the Outer Hebrides by horse and cart. As a metaphor for the way she has since conducted her career, the journey could hardly be more apt. Bunyan seems to cleave to the old adage that it’s better to travel in hope than to actually arrive. Following the 35-year silence between her hazy pop-folk debut, Just Another Diamond Day, and her immaculate 2005 comeback, Lookaftering, we might have hoped that Bunyan would start making up for lost time. Instead, a full nine years after Lookaftering comes Heartleap, an album so ethereal at first it barely seems to be here at all. Past allies such as Joe Boyd, Lookaftering producer Max Richter and – inevitably - the late, great arranger Robert Kirby, are absent this time. Instead, Heartleap is self-produced, self-arranged and largely self-played. Bunyan’s music has never been overly burdened by production flourishes, but here it’s almost painfully exposed. There is no bass or drums, with the result that these ten tracks seem to float, unanchored, at times threatening to slip away entirely. The woody, organic feel of much of Lookaftering is replaced by something more ethereal and sugar-spun. Heartleap feels at first like an extended mood piece, one long drift, but in time structure emerges. Choruses steal into view like lost lovers out of the fog, while the sighing strings, pattering piano lines and delicate guitar motifs entwine to create a finely-stitched tapestry of immense beauty. The highlight, as ever, is Bunyan’s pure, fragile voice, so closely miked it allows her to sing these simple, almost halting melodies at barely a whisper. Opener “Across The Water” sets a tone which rarely wavers for the next 30 minutes, each song’s simple sound-pad of gently picked electric guitar and washes of synths fleshed out by touches of flute, recorder, cello and kalimba. “Jellyfish” unwinds like a musical box which just keeps on spinning, Bunyan’s multi-tracked voices overlapping over a simple bell-like motif. “Gunpowder” sets a timeless sing-song melody afloat on a slow river of cello and violins. “Hare” is a dark, mysterious minor-key madrigal with woozy flute, rolling like the sea. It’s all so finely wrought that the subtle interplay of three guitars on “Holy Smoke” seems almost grandiose. When a muted saxophone breaks into “Shell”, it’s like a sonic hand grenade. Bunyan is a freak-folk heroine these days, much beloved of the likes of Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart (who pops up to add vocals on “Holy Smoke”), but her music isn’t quite folk. Rather, it’s a strange mix of chamber-pop, whispered torch songs and minimalist contemporary classical. At the end of the beautiful “Blue Shed”, the susurration of layered backing vocals reference another unclassifiable female singer, Kate Bush. Lyrically it’s an album of memory, reflecting on family, lovers, old faces, uncomfortable conversations, the spell of dreams, the pull of water. “Mother”, the sole piano-driven song, is a powerful portrait of piercing regret, while the memory of her mother ambushes Bunyan once again on the quietly devastating “Shell”. On “Blue Shed”, she articulates the double-edged yearning for a solitary sanctuary; “Gunpowder” lingers on “all the merry dances/You led me.” The words are as finely pared as the music, almost haiku-like. By the time the closing title track arrives, language has been all but relegated to redundancy, as Bunyan simply laces a string of words beginning with “heart” along the album’s most dazzlingly lovely melody. Like much of what has come before, the song feels like a gentle valediction. Bunyan has said she will not make another album, and this record certainly possesses all the characteristics of a goodbye. If Heartleap does indeed prove to be the final destination of Bunyan’s old horse and cart, it’s an entirely worthy one. Graeme Thomson Q&A VASHTI BUNYAN You’ve taken sole control on this album. Why? I finally had the opportunity to do it the way I heard it in my head, which is in no way to denigrate anything that went before, it was all a great joy, but it just seemed time to see what I could do myself. On Lookaftering Max [Richter] said, “You don’t have to put a picture on every wall,” and that really stayed with me. It feels so exposing because it’s just me, I’m not hiding behind anybody. It’s more like a self-portrait rather than someone else’s portrait of me. Would you like to work more quickly? I wanted every note to mean something, and that’s really what took the time. Also, I’m very slow at coming up with the songs, although “Heartleap” came to me very quickly, and in a way it said everything I’ve ever wanted to say. Is this really going to be your last album, or can I change your mind? When it was finally finished – my first deadline was 2008 – the label started taking about the next one and I thought, absolutely adamantly, No, I’m not going through that again! It felt like a lot of years and a lot of my life had gone into it. Time to do something else. But minds can change. INTERVIEW: GRAEME THOMSON