The promotional materials for LORCAN—a collaboration between the Vancouver-based singer Laucan and the electronic producer Samuel Organ—situate the record in a strange, pseudo-academic context. Organ says that, a few years ago, after being named “chief practitioner at the Nene Valley Sonic Research Centre,” he was “given unlimited access to vaults containing various sacred texts and artifacts.” The result of that research, says Organ, is this album: a collection of strange, otherworldly pieces that feel like they’re part of some newly disinterred chunk of lost history.

The kicker is that Nene Valley Sonic Research Centre is not, strictly speaking, a real place—though conceptually, it made me think of LA’s mysterious Museum of Jurassic Technology. But who cares? The music, yearning and ethereal, seems to cry out for this sort of thing. A few of the tracks even deliberately play with history: “Aignish On The Machiar” is a riff on a real Scottish folk tune, and “Kibbo Kift” takes its name from the early 20th-century spiritualist group. Some stories are worth getting lost in.