The live recording captures the sextet at their most unguarded. Lorna's vocals carry the weight of those intervening years, her voice now possessed of a deeper grain that serves these contemplative compositions well. Where once Secret Garden Gathering might have leaned into the more angular territories explored by their contemporaries The Wave Pictures or Jane Weaver, this collection finds them inhabiting quieter spaces.

Dave and Adam's intertwining guitars create a landscape rather than a rhythm section, their playing recalling the more pastoral moments of early Pentangle or the ambient folk explorations of Broadcast. Matthew's keyboards provide subtle colouration rather than melodic thrust, while Jay's drumming and Darren's bass work remain tastefully restrained throughout – this is music that understands the power of withholding as much as revealing.

The Welsh setting proves crucial to the EP's character. The open-air acoustics lend these songs a breathing quality that studio polish might have suffocated. You can hear the wind in the trees, the creak of guitar necks, the rustle of clothes against instruments – all the beautiful imperfections that remind you music is made by human hands.

Is-Y-Deri doesn't attempt to recapture the band's earlier incarnation. Instead, it presents Secret Garden Gathering as a group that has learned the value of patience, of allowing songs to unfold at their own pace. The EP's five tracks flow together like movements in a suite, each piece informing the next without ever feeling hurried or overstated.

This is music for late evenings and early mornings, for moments when the world feels manageable and immediate. Secret Garden Gathering have returned not with fanfare but with a whisper – and sometimes whispers carry further than shouts.