Craig Fortnam and his North Sea Radio Orchestra are back with the band's latest album Special Powers, the core orchestra is still the same line-up of Nicola Baigent, Luke Crookes, Harry Escott, Craig Fortnam, James Larcombe, Chantelle Pike, Brian Wright and Chloe Herington, with Chantelle being the new lead vocalist. The album was produced by Craig Fortnam and Mastered by Alberto Callegari.
The album opens with Mansions In Eternity that fades in with squiggly organ sounds almost like morse code messages with the ambient noises surrounding them until the strings arrive layering in beautiful visions of an incredibly opulent mansion on the outskirts of eternity.
Hearty is an orchestrated English folk song about FOMO that most modern of afflictions, is treated in a quasi-mediaeval folk style, the bassoon parps away delightfully. Barrel is a short bucolic instrumental interlude of wonderfully chilled out strings.
All Alice Like is a dreamy song about falling into a daylong slumber, the places she goes while deep adrift, the day turns into a week, wherein dreams of coming back as Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention seem to take hold within the majestic music.
Special Powers a traditional sounding English Folk song that asks all sorts of questions, about certain Special Powers you may or may not have been gifted. The violins on this song are rather beguiling along with a wonderful outro taking us deep within the forest of Special Powers.
Full Human has a vibrating organ for Chantell's vocals to accentuate telling us what makes a Full Human with the woodwind and backing vocals adding spirit and gentle musical caresses. Guitar Miniature No 5 is a short classical guitar interlude.
The album closes with The Players Ask For A Blessing On The Psalteries And Themselves setting WB Yeats classical folk poem of love and the need for spiritual assistance within the strings building to a magnificent conclusion, the realisation that the players music will live on beyond them.
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