Encircling themes of liminality, the intimacy of sound and collective creative processes, The Blue Hour takes shape as a print publication and split-side release. Initiated via a poetic prompt, a fragmentary text by writer Hannah Pezzack, the project draws its name from the intermediate phase between dusk and nightfall – “the twenty minutes at the end of the day when the sun dips a few degrees below the horizon, leaving an inky residue in its wake.”

In Maggie Nelson’s book Bluets (2009), the colour blue becomes a medium for philosophical reflections on emotion and memory. Turquoise, sea-washed glass and a square of navy dye are Nelson’s talismans in the midst of heartbreak. Unfolding in a similar prosaic style, the 10 tracks of The Blue Hour coalesce around saturated, haptic encounters, from field recordings of lonely cities to bodily rhythms: heartbeats, footsteps and breath.

Dania’s ‘Lament’ opens – a slow-motion lyrical sprawl overflowing with pensive melancholia. “Everything I touch touches me back,” whispers Angelina Nonaj on ‘If time bends’, her collaboration with santebela. The song features birdsong and roving synth, intertwining organic and synthetic utterances with Nonaj’s tactile words. Each chord a cresting wave, Anit Levan’s ‘Noise dimensions’ curves tonal frequencies into majestic, oceanic shapes. A transcendent lullaby, ‘Holnap’ centres on Adela Mede’s otherworldly voice, her Hungarian language lyrics looped over ruptured vocal patterns that spiral into Chantal Michelle’s broken-breath ‘Excavator’. Here, Michelle made recordings of her walk home just before midnight on New Years Eve. Her heels on the pavement collide with streaming water and violin strings creating a murky, atmospheric sonic landscape.

Staying true to the namesake of the imprint, many of the pieces were recorded inbetween places, in “somewhere”, transitional locations. Velvachell, AKA Rachel McDermott of the band WomenSaid, captured and manipulated sounds between the small town of Jilotepec, and the neighbouring Mexico City during a residency trip, and responded to them in Glasgow. The track was then presented as part of her audio/visual installation ‘to yourself’ at Listen Gallery. While Man Rei’s ‘Call’ – an incandescent, eerie-pop ballad – unfurled in Ballydehob, Ireland and Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Loosely following a linear pattern, the LP transitions from the height of summer with Lisa Fabian’s ‘Solstice’, a trance-inducing improvisation made during the shortest day of the year, to falling snow with ‘Winter go on’ by Astrid Øster Mortensen. Conjuring pale light and the endlessness of cold weather, Mortensen plays out gentle chords on the piano, its bellows and pedals sighing. For the penultimate instalment, Slowfoam provides crystalline mutterings, half-heard conversations that emanate from the gloom before disappearing, as intangible as shadows.