For their fourth album, Michael Begg and Deryk Thomas continue the development they began on 2009’s Black Hill album; deeply nocturnal, mournful and staggeringly beautiful music which takes in everything from the slow decay of time to post-colonial regret. This is undoubtedly their most superbly made and personal album to date.
The album begins with a black, velvet envelope of treated piano. Melancholy but not maudlin, the music is powerfully nostalgic as Begg and Thomas try to get into the mind of a sleeping pharaoh in the British Museum who is longing for his lost resting place. Lulled into a relaxed, thoughtful repose, I nearly jumped out of my skin when the slow, steady percussion of "Fortress Longing" breaks through the music like that feeling of falling in your sleep breaks through a dream. There are shades of Bohren & Der Club of Gore’s experiments in mood in the slinky bass motif but Human Greed have become so utterly dreamlike that the comparison is only superficial.
Voices emerge through the deep, gorgeous webs of sound as men, women and children intone: "Where is my blanket of sand?" Each time, the poignancy of these thoughts comes through strong. Plucked from their tombs by European and American archaeologists, what was meant to be an eternal rest became an eternal sideshow in museums far from home. On a more immediate level, here are priceless pieces of history taken from the people whose history these ancients were part of. One such piece of history, a gold pendant of two bees made by the Minoans on display in Heraklion, Crete. The Minoans were one of the first to domesticate bees for honey and, in Egypt, bees were symbolic of the nation and the pharaoh. Capturing this complex mixture of feelings, Begg’s colleague from Fovea Hex, Laura Sheeran, orchestrates a sublime vocal interlude on "Weeping Bees of Heraklion" which has the same lilting buzz of what I imagine these sad Minoan bees to sound like.
The limited edition of Fortress Longing comes with a bonus disc containing Colin Potter’s reconstruction of the raw materials. Like Potter’s work with Fovea Hex’s recent album, he demonstrates an insightful and unexpected perspective on the music and creates "Deshret" which equals the work Begg and Thomas put into the "rea" album. Long and elaborate tones, just about recognisable from Begg and Thomas’ originals, make up the bulk of the piece before resolving into Julia Kent’s cello playing.
I cannot help but be taken aback by how carefully composed and charged Fortress Longing is. Begg and Thomas have definitely gone beyond their previous benchmarks to create one of the albums of the year. This is a deep, multifaceted recording that comes together far better and far stronger than even their best work before this (and I admire the first three albums a lot). It is not simply a soundtrack to the sense of loss of history to shelves and storage cupboards but also a reflection on our own time on earth and what will become of us after death. The final message of Fortress Longing is to make a mark now and let it make its way into the eternity you cannot achieve.
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