I do not believe in God. I have never felt his sweet kiss on my cheek or his cool breath upon my fevered brow. This record however, listened to on a long, buttoned up Sunday evening sends me into such a reverie as to wonder what, if anything, I am missing; for God is all over this record or at least the essence that people associate with God, an essence that the great architect Nicholas Hawksmoor would describe as owning an ..awe-full majesty..


Huh? I..m trying to put across how somebody without a Religious bone in his body can be not only reached across the vast ocean of secular divide but can be captured and enraptured enough to nestle in the bosom of Abraham for nearly an hour through some kind of divine pollenisation merely by listening to twelve pieces of music. I don..t even think that half of this stuff has Religious provenance. W.B Yeats is represented with two musical portrayals of his work (although he was more of a Golden Dawn mystic than a holy roller); ..He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.. and ..He Gives his Beloved... The latter a reflective piano floor with high choral vaults ..building a sorrowful loveliness out of the battles of old times..; oboes and bassoons chase the tails of the horns as they flit and flutter along the breeze towards an almost unimaginable serenity. ..He Wishes for the Cloths Of Heaven.. starts with the hurdy gurdy angularity of Pram and lurches like a row boat on a choppy lake as Yeats.. poem chimes across it..s bows. Sharron Fortnam has a voice similar to Kate Bush..s but it has a translucent quality to it, like liquid crystal and she is occasionally accompanied by Richard Larcombe whose voices intertwines and compliments, sounding not unlike a young Bert Jansch . It..s not easy to write a melody for an already established piece of writing and for the most part Craig Fortnam does it very well, fashioning the music snugly around the words with a master tailor..s precision.

On a beano to Birmingham one chilly October during the English Civil War, Charles I stood on a hillside and addressed local recruits. The area is now Kingstanding and therein, it is said, lies the last barrow in Brum. ..King standing.. opens with the sound of nylon strings which then make way for a regal vibraphone and acoustic riff, spinning like a top while various instruments are introduced, bowing and scraping as they pay their respects. The riff could represent stability; the king unbowed in his knowledge of the crowns surety (obviously misplaced in the case of Charles I), while all around him mandarins and minions flutter, flatter and wars come and go, chaos revolving around the Royal Eye at the centre. There is a build-up of tension and then, after the kings arrogant and still unbelieving head has rolled across the timbered stage at his last gig in front of the banqueting house at Whitehall, there is confusion and an uncertainty that comes with a new consciousness. The coda is unsettling, full of doubt; the original figure still stands, ghostlike as it waits in the wings for the Restoration.

The music on this record has a depth that won..t be found on most releases this month. Whether or not that..s a good thing depends entirely on the listener but as so called independent music, particularly rock music becomes more insipid, the vapid ..punk.. posturing and slavish adherence to some imagined Rock..n..Roll rulebook more obvious and outmoded, it..s good to take your brain out once in a while for a light dusting and rewarding to peel back a layer of music and *gasp* find another layer. This record transports me back to the weird foreign stuff television used to hurl at us kids back in the seventies and to long forgotten puppety night Nutcracker Suites. There is a generation out there who were part of a Government/Vernon Elliot sponsored MKULTRA style mind control experiment only instead of drugs they were bombarded with wind instruments. Whenever you hear a bassoon or an oboe, you can be sure that an atrocity will be hard on its heels, committed by a thirty something muttering ..Noggin the Nog told me to do it... North Sea Radio Orchestra splash colour into every corner of the speakers with a regal splendour and effervescent celebration of God, Nature or whatever it is you may wish to call it. And Amen to that.