No-one would be quicker to acknowledge the horrors of the pandemic than Brigitte Beraha. But she's also made the most of its affordances. Her response has been By the Cobbled Path, one of the more beautiful art works to arise from the wounds of the last two years.

Mentored during this period by the wondrous Luciana Souza, Beraha entered into dialogue with the world around her north London home. Recording conversations, the cries and whispers of nature, even traffic noise and a loooooong bike ride, Beraha then improvised and composed with these found sounds (or did they find her?) to create a sound painting. The result is lyrical but never saccharine, at once strange yet familiar, a place where the ordinary is made extraordinary.

The results could have been indulgent and solipsistic. And given Beraha's boggling vocal range the music could have been overreaching and overdubbed. When the notes do gambol and gyre spectacularly, as on the album's emotional heart, ‘Moonstruck’, they still remain safe, if a little scary, within their context. Overall, and perhaps influenced by Souza's ‘less is more’ restraint, the effect is intimate, inviting, contained. And all the more powerful for finding a universe in a grain of sand. Jane Draycott has long worked melding found sounds, especially from nature, with her poetry: she and Beraha would be a special coalition.