^{Picture: Andrew Benge}

Malcolm Middleton is best known and loved for his old(er) band Arab Strap, currently enjoying their second go on the swings. But even as they released their 2021 comeback album, As Days Get Dark, Middleton was seeing other musicians: one other in particular. Joel Harries, Northampton-bred and now Manchester-based, has recorded as a solo artist and as one half of Team Leader with his partner Quincey Brown. A chance meeting with Middleton on his adopted home patch in the East Neuk of Fife has ultimately led to their collaboration as Lichen Slow.

‘We clicked with musical tastes and decided we would try writing some music together,’ says Middleton. ‘No plan, no expectations, let’s see if it works.’ The ideas started flowing remotely from their respective bases in early 2020 and continued seamlessly as the world went into lockdown; so seamlessly that their no-pressure sessions yielded a full album of songs, Rest Lurks.

Harries acknowledges that ‘if we’d been in a studio together, we’d probably have made a pretty different record,’ but Middleton was in his creative comfort zone. ‘Living in a small fishing village on the east coast of Scotland . . . it’s the way I work with other people anyway,’ he says. ‘This is probably just me being anti-social and not confident as a musician, but you are allowed space to get your stuff to a point where you’re happy to let someone else hear it. You’re never sending over thrown-down rubbish; it’s always thought out.’

The pair provided each other with artistic food for thought. ‘My music’s quite simplistic,’ reckons Middleton, ‘so it stretched me just to work along with his songwriting. Joel’s voice is really unique and, apart from his production skills, his guitar playing is very different from mine so a lot of the time I was trying to work out what the timing was in a certain piece before I could sing along or put some music to it.’

For Harries, the experience brought a different shade to songs he had written. ‘It expanded my vision of what I was capable of within the scope of one record. I would normally find a sound I like and do a lot of things in that realm, but the album is really diverse. That is in large part down to Malcolm’s influence on the writing and general feel of the songs.’ Work has already commenced on a follow-up but, for now, the duo are facing another frontier: how to reproduce their mood music together for a live audience. ‘We’ve only ever been in the same room three times,’ says Harries. ‘But it came together really fast. I’m excited to be playing it out.’

Rest Lurks is released by Rock Action on Friday 10 March; Lichen Slow will tour the UK throughout April