Fovea Hex: The Salt Garden 3
Headphone Dust

Since its 2005 formation, Fovea Hex's output has been modest, totaling as it does an initial trilogy of EPs, Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent, the 2008 full-length Here Is Where We Used To Sing, and a second group of EPs collected under the title The Salt Garden Trilogy. Following the release of the latter's initial parts in 2016 and 2017, the concluding installment is now with us, and it's safe to say it'll be received with as much rapture as its predecessors. At four songs and twenty-two minutes, the release is, like the group's discography, modest, but it's every bit Fovea Hex at its most quintessential.

The outfit remains the brainchild of Irish singer Clodagh Simonds (vocals, keyboards, rhythm beds), but the contributions of Michael Begg (vocals, rhythm beds), Cora Venus Lunny (violin, viola), and Kate Ellis (cello) on the group's music shouldn't be overlooked, nor should those by guests Guido Zen (rhythm beds, beats), Medazza ( Martin and Parvin Branch, Damien Byrne, Ed Kady, Rachel Lacey, Brigid Madden, Bernie Smith), and The Dote Moss Choir (Max Jones and friends). Still, no matter how many individuals are involved in a typical Fovea Hex production, the ensemble's signature element is Simonds' stirring voice. Issued on Steven Wilson's Headphone Dust label, the EP comes in three standard editions, in download, CD, and ten-inch vinyl (with the CD) formats; a limited special edition is also available that features a bonus CD containing four Wilson remixes.

As always, the group's songs defy easy categorization, weaving together as they do folk, electronica, drones, and pop into intimate, incandescent wholes; the one thing of which one can be certain is that the music will intoxicate. “The Land's Alight” initiates the EP on a mesmerizing note with chanted vocals wrapped in a lustrous electronic swirl; after that intro, voices swell for choir-like expressions emphatically delivered, and the instrumental design likewise grows in stature when radiant elements flicker atop a bass undercurrent. In contrast to the fullness of the opener's arrangement, the plaintive instrumental “Trisamma” opts for a restrained chamber orchestral-styled wedding of doleful strings and reverb-drenched piano. Choir vocal resources return for “A Million Fires,” this time the harmonium-driven music more drone-like than the opener and, though I might be mistaken, Brian Eno's voice seems to be one of the many included in the performance; though synthesizers whistle through the arrangements upper sphere, the piece is as timeless a folk drone as might be imagined. At EP's close, “The Given Heat” caps the release with an incantation that proves especially haunting in pairing Simonds's vocal with an ethereal, strings-enhanced backdrop.

That bonus CD shouldn't be overlooked, by the way. Instead of merely tweaking the originals, Wilson has produced ambitious reinventions that are so extensive, the bonus disc's forty-nine-minute duration dwarfs the original's modest twenty-one. While the titles of the five remixes aren't restatements of the originals, they allude to them, with “Is Lanza Light & Given,” for instance, making connections to both “The Land's Alight” and “The Given Heat,” and in naming the other tracks “Is,” “Lanza,” “Light,” and “Given,” the suggestion's made that the four offer further variations on that first remix's content. Elements of the four Fovea Hex originals emerge within the hallucinatory makeovers, naturally, but in contrast to the tautness of the band's constructions, Wilson's are akin to ambient soundscapes. During “Is Lanza Light & Given,” for example, ethereal voices glide hauntingly through stripped-down landscapes swollen with synths and strings, but Simonds' vocal also appears to make the tie to the source material explicit. As haunting are “Lanza,” where angelic voices undulate alongside a throbbing synth drone, and “Given,” of the five remixes the one that hews closest to the original.

Does The Salt Garden 3 signify a major change in style and approach from previous Fovea Hex releases? Not in the slightest, though that in no way should be construed as a criticism. Here's that rare case where the group and its music benefits from hewing to a course already set, and it would be hard to imagine anyone entranced by the group's earlier output not having the same response to this latest chapter.

December 2019