This is the debut album on Seed Records for Sancho, a 9-piece folktronica band headed by Paul Hanford. Mystery Year is a fairly short, gentle album mostly built around acoustic guitar refrains, with electronic manipulations adding a sense of cinematic depth, warmth and simplicity.

After the surprisingly upbeat choir vocal samples of We’ve Missed You, the track settles down into the album’s trend of plucked strings and bitty electronic musings. As Light Shone, They Fled has an almost 60s feel, with psychedelic guitars winding over dusty percussion and soft, bending bass tones – it’s tuneful and atmospheric.

On March, Sancho displays glitchy electronica, taking sequencing guitar motifs and etching them onto a crackled background, but the collective have the skills to stretch themselves beyond introspective minimalism, as demostrated on Spare Rooms – a delightfully quaint folk track, and one of the few vocal tracks on offer.

The album pretty much flits between these varying compositional styles from beginning to end, sometimes erupting into poppy domains – witness 20 Messages with its delightful curling guitar phrases and melodic chimes set to a background hum of sampled vocal chatter. With the live drums added, the track has an almost progressive rock feel, although its faint electronic meanderings are a constant.

Mystery Year closes with the emotive Blood On Snow, as dulcet programmed beats play beneath a resolute bass line and melancholy strings. It takes a while to grow on you, but slowly but surely the album reveals its charm. There’s certainly a lot more going on production wide than immediately meets the eye. A fine debut.