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Strip the implied Tom Bombadil vestments and bristles from Father Beard, and you will find Brian Lucas and Mark Williams. Who would these good folk be? None other than the missing half of Mirza, unaccounted for amid the activities of the subsequently prolific Glenn Donaldson and Steven R. Smith (they of countless Jewelled Antler collective and solo configurations), now respectively relocated to Thailand and Spain. Neither the inconvenience of geographic distance nor the dissociation from Mirza's galvanic poles have diminished the seemingly telepathic rapport between these two individuals. Cultivated in isolation, via international postal exchange, their repartee flowers anew.

If Mirza was a communal expression of youthful ecstasies - of soft sun warmth on skin, fur, scale, and leaf; of the harmonized bloodswell and breath of sky, heart, and earth - Tokens, then Light is a more mature articulation of private enchantments. Where Mirza’s ambitious struggles with the inexpressible often ended in petulant, frustrated tantrums, Father Beard’s devotions, meted out in reverent measures as lacewing raags spun from field recordings, echo, and dream-besotted recitation, evince the richness of wisdom that comes only with experience.

It can not be coincidence that Lucas and Williams seem to have discovered for themselves some of the same many-forked routes and roots favored by their estranged brethren, Donaldson and Smith. In developing their individual dialects, all four have extracted from the Babel of earthly musics those gentle yet distinct gestures common to Eastern temples; to harvest prayer; to birdsong; to the pristine reveries of early Felt and the Durutti Column; to Eyeless in Gaza’s rustic impressionism; to the Cocteau Twins’ swooning exaltations; to the patient, painterly detail of Morton Feldman; and to the rapturous Man-and-his-universe vibrations channeled by the “kosmische musik” crowd.

Tokens, then Light begins with a hazy but evocative collage of Thai field recordings, setting up expectations for a program of the Bishop Bros.’ filtered exotica. What follows instead is a fragment of a devotional dirge, its unnerving eschatological implications just barely negated by gilded ripples of guitar played in the manner of Popol Vuh’s Daniel Fichelscher. With the unmistakable whiff of gamelan bells and bowed-and-buffeted cymbals, “Templar Theme” whisks us far away from Davenport or Feathers Family country. But the echoes of AMM-style noisescraping amid tremulous guitar figures represent only a brief detour through the Pacific forest temples of Thuja before “Black Circles” introduces a Möbius-strip bassline soon swallowed by dense instrumental haze.

Following the crook'd trail, as the fog dissipates, one discerns the long-faded tandem footpaths of Charalambides and Windy & Carl and, at the fork of “Helm Welts,” trampled flowers and weeds strewn with the calling cards of Supreme Dicks, tree trunks scarred by healed-over slashes of “LMC,” “DF,” “VR,” and “tMD.” At the other hand, lit by "A Love-flicker," the ground bears evidence of psych-pop troubadours’ passing with mincing tread. Perhaps the four fleet feet of some Skygreen Leopards have bounded down this lane in pursuit of a purple gazelle? Might all these signifiers be clues towards Father Beard’s ultimate destination? The question is not answered in the course of Tokens, then Light, a juncture at which possible routes converge, merge, and diverge.

One can't help hoping that it is the more developed pieces that end the album - the sumptuously languorous guitar-and-percussion fantasias of "Lilt" and "Absinthe" and the spooked lullaby raag-blues of "Clouds of Dust" - that will predicate the bearing of Lucas and Williams' future forays. One also prays that it will not be another eight years before they are heard from again. Welcome back, friends. Ramble off in search of new routes, if you must. But please return. Soon.

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