Fovea Hex: Huge
Die Stadt

Die Stadt spares no expense in presenting Huge, the second EP (following Bloom) in Fovea Hex's Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent series. The disc arrives in a varnish-covered, textured fold-out case accompanied by an insert displaying lyrics and personnel info; thankfully, the 20 minutes of music prove to be as distinctive. As before, a remarkable pool of musicians (Brian Eno, Roger Doyle, Percy Jones, Carter Burwell, Colin Potter) convenes to clothe Clodagh Simonds' songs in multi-hued garb. The haunting dirge meditation “Huge (The Joy Of Trouble)” casts the spotlight on Simonds' 'heartbeaten' multi-tracked voice, with Doyle's 'glass' and Eno's keyboards deepening the song's mystery. Simonds' psalteries lend the dreamy instrumental “A Song For Magda” a medieval air before “While You're Away” completes the EP's symmetrical design with siren voices musing over a drone. The magisterial merging of Simonds' glazed harmonium and chimes with Burwell's 'shredded pianos,' Cora Venus Lonny's strings, and Geoff Sample's marsh warbler and dipper field recordings enhances the song's fantastical mood. Could it be some trick of refraction that enables Fovea Hex's ethereal odes to move so effortlessly from the 18th-century to the present?

August 2006