Progressive Rock
Cymbalick Music · 7 September 2026
“Submerged” is three minutes and fifty-one seconds of keyboards opening by degrees, and with that the territory of “The Fourth Crossing” is settled: twelve instrumental pieces, forty-five minutes and fifty-one seconds, and a single name on the credits. Tim Morse writes, performs and produces it, and the instruments he lists are synthesisers, keyboards, guitars, vocoder and percussion. The only other performer on the record is “Ema”, credited with voice, and iTunes files the thing under Ambient.
Morse comes from deep inside prog: he wrote “Yesstories”, he plays in the tribute band Parallels and he has been releasing records of his own since “Transformation” in 2005. Here, though, he sets up closer to Klaus Schulze and Tomita than to any band with songs in it: “Assembly Line”, three fifty-seven, is a repeating electronic sequence with keyboard figures passing over the top, which is the mechanics of the Berlin School, and “Space Station Lounge” ends up among the keyboards of the “Autobahn” era. The best piece, though, is the stillest: “Eternal”, four minutes eighteen, lets the layers fall away and settles on a melodic phrase you can hum afterwards, and it is the one moment where the album stops illustrating a landscape and starts singing one.
It closes with “The Celestial Cathedral”, organ and choir, in a mix Morse signs with Craig Long that gives it the width the title asks for. But the two pieces meant to carry the journey are the two shortest on the record: the title track goes by in two minutes forty-seven and that closing cathedral in two thirty-two, so the title and the ending are stated rather than played out, while the long stretch goes to “Confusion in Aisle 14”. An album that presents itself as a crossing makes its two decisive moments sound like two jottings, and several more pieces set up an atmosphere and leave it exactly as they found it, a landscape Morse already walked on “Soundtracks” in 2024. The Bandcamp edition adds one more odd decision: it puts a single edit of “Vibration” at the head of the running order, so the first thing a buyer hears is the trailer for a track that will reach them in full two positions later.
Rating: 7.0/10
Text by Guillem Cardós