Fugue Volume One by Harvey Summers

 

Fugue Volume One

By

Harvey Summers

Written by

Steve Sheppard

 

It’s incredible to think that my musical journey with Harvey Summers is now 22 years old, it started back in the year of 1994 with the album Dream Spinning, two decades later, Harvey and myself now have something in common, we have both created a concept album from trying and testing times for us both. Concept albums are difficult to achieve and based on a personal theme they can be sometimes hard to get over, but here on Fugue Volume One Harvey has gone on to create something that yes is deeply personal, but also incredibly addictive and palpable.

The album is part of a bigger project and Volume One is blessed with 8 fluent solid and magical tracks, now I will set the scene by using a direct quote from the artist and then you can to go on this mystical and magical journey with me and the composer as we gaze in the scrying mirror at this brand new creation. Harvey says “At the centre of Fugue is the Archive of the Lost — an enormous, ancient and rather magical library run by a group of witches, where things that have been forgotten, displaced or perhaps shouldn’t exist at all are preserved”.

Now there is so much more to this amazing album than one might first think, apart from the musical contents we are gifted a story of deep and dark proportions, where there is truly more than meets the eye, so to each and every listener I say delve deep and turn the page, and go then, there are other worlds than these.

Track one is our beginning, the slow and ponderous string start called Fracture, it’s almost like the rifts in the space time continuum are slowly breaking open to allow us to peak behind the veil, the classical motifs are strong here with elements of Phillip Glass meshed into the weave of a brilliant opening, this leads us seamlessly into the realm of the next offering called The Memory Harvest. There is a far deeper aspect to this creation now, one that requires an enquiring mind or perhaps no mind at all, and perhaps that mind has been altered in some aspect, this is a crafted movie styled opus that constantly builds, pulls back and progresses, the crescendos and powerful refrains and percussion manifest a powerful masterpiece of grandeur indeed.

The sounds preceding the musical construct on Coven reminded me of the good old days of new age music and Medwyn Goodall’s Clan albums, the early ones. However, Summers has gone a stage further by building on the foundations of the story and providing a deeply scared offering here indeed, one can feel the depth and mysticism within the very weave world of the piece, the ethereal vocalisations are simple breath-taking especially in contrast with the biting and percussive powered opus, at times this also reminded me in parts of Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds release back in the day in intent and power.

When I listen to this album I am reminded of the entire planet I created in my memory palace, like Harvey, I know that world as well as I do the one I live within now, it is as real to me as this one. One must think what an amazing thing the human mind is, what great potential we have for creation and manifestation and on tracks like The Circle of Accusation, we can explore further, deeper and darker, the album is a perfect soundtrack multi-instrumental release. There is a sense of procession and mystery here that is about to be revealed that is so very fascinating and deeply addictive about this offering.

As we glide into the world below us, we follow the beam and find the very next window of musical opportunity called Furnace of Remorse. I must admit this reminds me of one of my pieces called The Forest of Darkness; there is an ambience here that flows, but on this part of the album, there is almost a hint of a pavane, a classical motif that allows the composition to build, float and move onwards, this is also the shortest piece off the release at just under 5 minutes.

We are now so deep into the woodlands of mysterious consequences that we find a dramatic offering that literally creeps up upon us, and with such great drama and poise, Ravenwitch. Once the offering is established, the percussive drive urges this almost wraithlike energy to swirl around us, probably one of the most emphatic tracks off the album, although I would urge listeners to treat this entire release as a constant musical narrative. The chant like sounds and the electronic vibes give this specific offering a gritty edge that manifests a total dominant physical and powerfully intense arrangement.

Our penultimate crafted slice of genius is Requiem², the softer approach from the very opening is numinous and the ambience contained within this quite amazing long form manifestation is otherworldly. The symbiotic vocalisations and choir create a stunning juxtaposition of musical candour. The soundtrack style is most certainly Lord of the Rings in its epic glory and regal reverberation. For me this is one of the most amazing cinematic offerings I have heard for decades, and on its own is worthy of an award for its content and substance.

The concluding musical narrative is entitled Incantations. There is also an element of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, composed by French composer Paul Dukas in 1897, within this last composition, but this is far darker and it resonates through a multitude of musical dimensional corridors. This is the chaos that all magic comes from, the spiralling power that fills the void of reality as we know it, in between the realms of sanity and back across the twilight zone of tomorrow’s horizon. The spell summoning in the mid-way part of this track is literally impossible to stop listening to. Here the artist does something so masterfully on this final offering, he pauses and allows the remaining piece to slowly build from its natural state, and it’s the coda as you would expect leaves the listener on the razors edge wanting more.

Fugue Volume One by Harvey Summers has to be the artist’s most comprehensive work thus far, he has taken a personal real life occurrence with his health, and from those dark moments manifested something quite incredible, it would be unfair to compare this to any of his previous work, and the listener should listen to it as a complete musical tale of absolute epic proportions, and jump right into the portal of Fugue Volume One by Harvey Summers.