July Skies is the brainchild of guitarist-pianist-clarinetist-vocalist Antony Harding. He does collaborate with a few musicians on The Weather Clock, but by and large this album comes straight from the reminiscences and imaginings of Harding alone. His mission is quite clear, as expressed in his press kit and on his Web site and MySpace page: to capture moments of lost youth and endless childhood summers, albeit filtered through whatever tricks the mind plays over the passing of time.

It's a concern similar to the main thrust of Hauschka's whimsical-but-contemplative modern-composition jaw-dropper Ferndorf (Fat Cat), but Harding's methods and inspirations are considerably different. While Ferndorf predominantly involved John Cage-indebted treated-piano techniques, which fostered a sense of nostalgia, The Weather Clock is all about shimmering guitar textures in its pursuit of yesteryear.

Harding cites "fractured memories of the 1970s" as an influence on his MySpace page, and his press materials state that the disc aims to capture mid-20th-century Britain, particularly in terms of its design and architecture. Having not grown up in the United Kingdom, I cannot speak for the level of accuracy or authenticity here, though I feel convinced every time I give this a listen.

With its languid, echoing guitars and unhurried pace, it certainly evokes a summer-day pastoralia: I can see children playing in warm meadows, leisurely walks in the town square, afternoon tea with cucumber sandwiches. In spite of all of its strata of guitar treatments, modern as they are, the album still manages to come across as rather quaint in temperament - this is the stuff of memories. And even if these weren't my recollections per se, I find myself having no difficulty "remembering" them anyhow.

Sonically speaking, The Weather Clock recalls many of the greats of atmospheric mood-making: Harding's guitar work displays a genuine love for the likes of Flying Saucer Attack, Robin Guthrie/Cocteau Twins, Slowdive/early Mojave 3, the Durutti Column, and sometimes even Maurice Deebank's role in Felt. The influence of ambient master Brian Eno is surely palpable as well, particularly in the hovering hums and whirrs which appear throughout the disc.

Composed mainly of instrumentals - Harding sings on two tracks - The Weather Clock twirls and glides along with nary a care in the world, settling freely and easily into slow-rippling washes of guitar atmospherics. This is fragile music - frequently focused around the repetition of simple passages, tweaked and augmented with the most careful of embellishments. Listen more intently, however, and the songs reveal themselves to be far more complex than initial spins would suggest. Layers of guitar textures are heaped upon each other, with notes swooping and sighing and occasionally even sobbing deep into the mix.

Case in point: "Branch Line Summers Fade," the first full-length track on the disc. (The Weather Clock opens with, tellingly, a 31-second clip of an British speaking clock, once used on BBC Radio to announce the time.) Speckled, languid guitar strums are joined by silken, shimmering notes of electric guitar. They spin and float spirals around each other for four and a half minutes, an elegant dance of light and shadow. One could say that the song doesn't necessarily go anywhere, but "going nowhere" can sometimes be a perfectly lovely place to be.

"See Britain by Train" is the more assertive older brother to "Branch Line," with its shimmering swells of electric guitar pushing against a fluid circular bassline (courtesy of guest Robert Glover) and the understated glow of sustained organ notes (provided by Michael Oliver). The song, in fact, tugs along with an insistence much like the work of another Guthrie acolyte, Ulrich Schnauss - though without the electronic pulse of the German artist's output.

The first of the vocal tracks, "The Girl on the Hill," should thrill listeners pining away for the lazy-day ambience of early Mojave 3 recordings - or Slowdive, for that matter. Simple acoustic guitar strums are paired with graceful ripples of the electric. Meanwhile, gauzy feedback textures hover in the higher registers, wafting and humming over Harding's gently fluttered, slightly fey vocals. Observing a girl on a hill, picking flowers and flying kites, he sings longingly, "It's where I'd rather be today" - sure, it might sound like a rather antiquated confession, but that's the whole idea.

The other vocal number, "One Morning in May," is a gorgeous adaptation of a 1951 poem by Pamela Melnikoff. Here, the change in seasons is feted with slow eddying guitar strums, heaped in reverb, and aching tremolo effects. Harding's voice is given a deliciously spectral echo, thus creating the impression that he is soaring somewhere above the quiet English countryside he witnesses with awe: "patiently I'll wait to see/what blossoms bring in spring," he sighs, and I find myself sighing, too.

The album also includes a couple of exquisite piano instrumentals: "Broadcasts for Autumn Term" is an introspective, carefully unfolding set of night-sky twinkles and simple sustained notes, all painted with broad strokes of echo, while the unadorned austerity of "Waiting for the Test Card" makes for a starkly moving experience. Elsewhere, the ringing arpeggios of "Distant Showers Sweep Across Norfolk Schools" remind me of the ornate, breathtakingly dexterity of Maurice Deebank's playing on those beloved Felt records from the '80s.

Lastly, for something truly epic, head straight to the six-and-a-half-minute "Skies for Nash," a somber haze of hot-glowing guitar drones and slow plucked melodies, sailing and ascending and pushing for the stratosphere like a long-lost Flying Saucer Attack number. It's a massive, roaming, otherworldly presence, mind-melting and magnificent and entirely uncaring about nostalgia or memories or any of the other notions around which The Weather Clock is focused. Anomaly or not, the tune points to a direction I wouldn't mind seeing July Skies endeavor again in the future. And yes, headphones are definitely required.