“Here it is / The longest day / Open-mirrored / Flowing on / It just gets dark / From here, I see”

Setting out his stall, these are the first words we hear from Scottish chanteur Alexander Ortolan’s vespertine croon on his second EP, Open-mirrored, flowing on. Released on the final day proper of summer (that is, the last day before the autumn equinox), the record very much concerns itself with a nostalgia (in the truest sense of the word) for various summers, sun-dappled yet tinged with melancholy.

A brief instrumental introduction, Dora (Ménerbes), finds a spectral repeated theme drawing the listener into the world of the EP. A layering of field recordings and a music box, the piece imagines a fragmentary vision of the thoughts of a woman haunted by her fading memories.

With its weaving strings and chiming harpsichord, (Song for) the longest day recalls a less sepulchral version of a cut from Nico’s The Marble Index, or perhaps one of (eternal touchstone) Scott Walker’s chamber drama miniatures on Scott 3.

Elsa la rose takes its inspiration from Agnes Varda’s synonymous short film from 1966. Imagery from Varda’s tender portrait of the Franco-Russian poet couple Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet is intertwined with a more personal rumination, set to a musical infusion of breezy and ever-so-slightly offbeat lounge pop.

An undeniable dose of melodramatic popular song runs through the veins of Attic room. The track impressionistically traces the early days of a love affair and sets it to an epic arrangement in triple time that revives a tradition of song that dominated the airwaves of the 1960s, while perhaps also recalling the most swooningly grand ballads of early Suede or ‘Beehive’-era David Sylvian.

The closing track features the return of the opening theme on Dora before dissolving into a place that exists only in moonlight, which takes its title from Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s artwork of the same name. Originally recorded as two separate pieces on an upright piano (and glockenspiel), the two were eventually inseparably melded via an experimental (arguably haphazard) process utilising a delay pedal and two cassette machines (one featuring a variable playback speed, the other with a broken erase head).

All in all, the thematic cogency of these songs both lyrically and musically, seemingly left no choice but for them to appear together. Open mirrored, flowing on is the follow up to Ortolan’s debut record (the Mothlight EP) and will be available on streaming services on 22 September. The song Mothlight was paired with The Walker Brothers in the ‘breakfast blend’ on Radcliffe & Maconie’s BBC Radio 6 Music show earlier this year.