- A rich, sometimes spiritual album inspired by the unique photography of Steven F. Arnold.
- It was surprising to read in a recent Dance Wax interview that Mike Greene "studied art more than I ever did music; I never actually studied music in any formal capacity." His pedigree—originally a guitarist, he spent four years playing keyboards and programming for pop star La Roux—belies the latter admission, as does the calibre of music he's been releasing as Fort Romeau since 2012: panoramic, pristine house that fuses classicism and sleek, sparkling idiosyncrasies. The influence of art, on the other hand, can feel general or oblique in his work, from the Blue Velvet-referencing Insides cover (the color palette of David Lynch's film informed the album, Greene says) to the Heaven & Earth artwork, inspired by an illustration seen in a Beatles songbook. These images might have suggested tone or mood, but they weren't necessarily saying much.
Greene's new LP Beings Of Light is a different beast in that regard, the most palpable, fulsome and cohesive expression yet of the connection between his music and the art that inspires it. The cover features a tableau vivant created and photographed by multidisciplinary artist and Dalí protege Steven F. Arnold in 1984. Called "Power Of Grace" (it shares a name with the album's third track), the image features a regal, crowned figure swathed in a diaphanous robe and appearing as if levitating, surrounded by celestial swirls and scrunches of metallic fabric.
Greene told Tim Sweeney on Beats In Space last month that he watched a documentary about Arnold (most likely Heavenly Bodies) while working on the record and was struck by his "punk methodology" of using dollar-store finds to construct sumptuous scenes. It's a practice that informed Greene's approach to making this record, he says, elevating simple production processes to create music that is beautiful and otherworldly. In truth, Greene's entire catalogue seems guided by this philosophy, but on Beings Of Light this transcendence feels particularly visceral.
Echoing his epic RA Podcast, which tracked Greene's personal pandemic journey from dark night of the soul through to hope and, finally, love, Beings Of Light is similarly searching, with a strong spiritual throughline. The xylophonic, pulsing synths of opener "Untitled VI" have a holy quality to them, enriched by barely-there crackle and whispery choral chanting. "Porta Coeli," named after an ancient church in Puerto Rico that now houses a museum of religious art, layers feather-light elements—the softest of keys, lowest of drones, faintest of bird calls—into a meditative womb of sound.
"The Truth" is low-slung deep house built around the titular vocal loop prompting an inwards journey, while the oddball minimalism of "Power of Grace" is leavened by airy, springy synths in its outro. These ripples of light lead into the glowy opening of "Spotlights," the clubbiest cut on the LP. You can hear the ode to New York in its swaggering bassline and sassy vocal samples, but Greene never loses the ecclesiastical thread that stitches the album together, here felt in the warm synth that wends through the track's end like a sunbeam.
As much as Arnold's "radical class politics" (in which ingenuity trumps resources) are said to have influenced Beings Of Light, his mystical aesthetic and decadent bohemia—for months Arnold lived with other art students communally on the Balearic island of Formentera, painting, playing dress-ups and taking acid daily—are felt even more strongly. "Ramona," blossoming from repetitive playa tech house into a rapturous synth break, is probably the best example of this, while the title track closes out the album with luminous pads and the sense that this is the same Greene who emerged from the pandemic determinedly optimistic, with renewed faith in the transformative power of art.
In a 2016 interview with RBMA Daily, Greene said, "The club music that I enjoy the most finds some way to be kind of [a] happy medium between being physically effective on a sound system and having enough interesting musicality to transcend being functional." Greene's tracks, as effective as they are distinctive, have always achieved this balance. Curated into a journey as immersive and carefully sequenced as Beings Of Light, his artistry reaches new heights.
Tracklist01. Untitled IV
02. The Truth
03. Power Of Grace
04. Spotlights
05. (In The) Rain
06. Ramona
07. Porta Coeli
08. Beings Of Light