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CD Feature/ Fovea Hex: "Huge"

  Tobias

The main reason why some people display a certain obsession to collecting music, buying and stocking more CDs and Vinyls than they could possibly properly listen to, is a simple one: They are still looking for that one album that can hit them just like that first record they bought, the one that changed their life. The music industry and the media know this and have subsequently reverted to feeding the dream by wallowing in superlatives. As a consumer (the one thing, according to “Fight Club”, which we all are) one reacts with a mixture of distrust and secret hopes – could it be true after all? Such was my reaction when “Bloom” landed on my desk, a beautifully packaged EP with a mere three tracks and a laudatio from the international press which could fill some small town’s phone book. Was it worth this excessive praise or were we all being lured into false childhood dreams again?

To no small surprise, every drop of ink devoted to this disc prooved to be true. These were not just songs, these were little worlds of words and sound, sung in a distant and yet highly seductive voice, as if whispered by the ghost you were making love to right before you go to sleep. The first song started with a question, but there were never any answers – just new doors opening into more unknown rooms. Only a few months later, the story continues with  “Huge”, the second installment of a planned tryptychon. Again Clodagh Simmonds has invited friends like Brian Eno, Colin Potter, Andrew McKenzie and Carter Burwell over to play instruments like “I-believe-in-a-place Keyboards”, psalteries, “odd sounds”, “subaquatic bass” and “shredded piano”. Glass is also used on two tracks and it makes for an excellent metaphor, as the music indeed has a weightless, translucent and shimmering quality to it. The floating character of these pieces is further enhanced by various overlapping and shifting layers of drones, as well as by the fact that all music segues to make for a continuous stream. And a stream it is indeed, as the compositions follow no superimposed rules, have no verse, bridge nor chorus, no grand finale nor sudden outbursts. Like a river, they run through a channel of ethereal harmonics, faint voice clusters, pulsating bass lines and a  string ensemble melting with the aighs of a glazed harmonium. On top of it all is Simmonds’ voice, sounding crestfallen at first, then displaying signs of anger, exultation, madness and surprise. But even more than last time, it is the lyrics that hit you: “Between the mystery and the fact/ arrives the sweetest fresh sliver of day/ How we love to see this other world unfold along the blade/ Blossoming as it breaks through the old grey veil.”

That is, without naming it, what every music lover is searching for. “Huge” touches a spot which had been left to sleep for much too long, it’s a lucid dream in the colours of an old photograph from a dust-covered box. And even though its poetry is pure and true, it all circles around the one piece without words, “A Song for Magda”, which leads you straight into this vortex. “All across my face this brocade is spilling strong perfume”, Clodagh oracles at the very end, “I stand and drink it all right in”. Even in these overhyped times, there are still albums capable of lighting your soul like the first record you bought. This is one of them.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Fovea Hex at Janet Records
Homepage: Die Stadt Records