LAVISH, ADVENTUROUS AND unashamedly weird, Yemrot’s first album, The Sunken Garden, is one, as we used to say, for the heads. The brainchild of Margate-based multi-instrumentalist Jimi Tormey, it has occasional echoes of psych forebears like Kevin Ayers and Robert Wyatt, but Yemrot’s musical world is far stranger than that. Partly based around the escapades of the mysterious Dill Dandin and what happens when he dives into a giant sinkhole, The Sunken Garden has a mischievous twinkle in its eye.
“I recorded this album during the first few months of Covid,” says Tormey. “During the recording I saw Elton John performing I’m Still Standing for a Covid relief thing on the BBC. He’d dragged a piano outside, in front of a basketball hoop, and sang, ‘I’m Dill Dandin!’ repeatedly. The…