The Dowland Project, the experimental ensemble which re-examines the performing and improvising processes inherent in early music, left Dowland behind a long time ago, with their first CD (11/99). Since then they have explored 17th-century Italian and English territory in ‘Care-charming sleep’ (2/04) and medieval song in ‘Romaria’ (3/08). This new release combines unused material from those last two discs (mostly the former), and the results are perhaps less focused, though certainly no less entrancing. It also has the benefit of bringing together two different line-ups, creating as it were a bigger band: tenor John Potter, saxophonist John Surman and lutenist Stephen Stubbs (present on both discs), with Baroque violinist Maya Homburger and double-bassist Barry Guy from the first and fiddler Milo≈ Valent from the second.

The title comes from the tracks laid down as a spontaneous addendum to the ‘Care-charming sleep’ sessions, deep into the night after the album’s completion had been celebrated in duly convivial fashion. Perhaps that sounds unpromising; but musicians have the constitutions for that kind of thing and there is no failure of concentration in these tracks, some of which were done in one take. Presumably those in which Potter recites a medieval text while instruments improvise around him come from this session, and there is certainly a loosely freewheeling feel to several others, but as Potter points out there are some that achieve a more structured feel. Elsewhere there are more carefully worked-out ‘day’ pieces and even a couple of actual Renaissance compositions for lute. It seems pointless to try too hard to describe these tracks; like most jazz, folk and early music, all of which it draws from, people will surrender to its atmosphere and sound (beautiful, in my opinion, and beautifully recorded too) before its intellectual processes. For my part, I listened to its hauntingly voiced tune-fragments and Tom Waits-like rustlings and knockings late one hot summer night and found myself much mellowed.