Three years ago, the British composer and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Cronshaw released a haunting, atmospheric album The Unbroken Surface of Snow, which became a cult success in Europe. Now, he and the three other musicians involved in that project have become a band, SANS, which expands his experiment in fusing different folk influences in a quietly intense style that has the spontaneity of jazz. Each SANS performance is different, which is why this album was recorded live. Cronshaw plays a variety of zithers, along with the enormous fujara flute, and he's joined by Ian Blake on bass clarinet and saxophone and Tigran Aleksanyan, a master of the haunting Armenian reed pipe, the duduk, while vocals are provided by Finnish star Sanna Kurki-Suonio. The result is a subtle, at times gently unsettling album in which ancient laments from around the Baltic are fused with themes from England, Scotland and Armenia. Exquisite.