Part time movie critic Antony Hegarty and his fellow Johnsons have followed up I Am A Bird Now with yet another powerfully cathartic song cycle The Crying Light, a set which sees Hegarty move from his inner trauma and gender-based drama to an exploration of the world outside his personal neuroses, focusing on “[his] relationship to the environment and the elements … the natural world.” “Epilepsy Is Dancing” embodies that theme, entering the annals of songs about epileptic fits (cue “She’s Lost Control”) by finding naturalistic poetry in the terror of seizure (“And I’m finding my rhythm / As I twist in the snow”). While Antony flutters and Nico Muhly’s buttery arrangements envelop, an epileptic woman falls into a Midsummer’s Night Dreamworld full of body painted and nude nymphs, carnivale masks, and butterflies tricklng from Hegarty’s lips. Fittingly surreal and beautiful. (Bare breasts are on display herein, so please note it’s NSFW.)

If the production looks impressive, that’s because it is, and also because the directorial team behind its vision (named AFAS) comprises the Wachowski Brothers (yes those ones), painters Tino Rodriguez and Virgo Paradiso (sets and costumes), choreographer Sean Dorsey, photographers Chris Blasingame and Banker White, and producer Jim Jerome. That production fee is getting cut in far more than quadrants. Meanwhile, a different taste of the album:

• Antony & The Johnsons – “Another World”Download

The Crying Light is out in the UK via Rough Trade and in the States via Secretly Canadian. It’s very good.