Artist: Elyvilon
Title: The Shrouded Isle
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Sokol Keep
Was this predestined? That I would feel moved to review this? Well actually not at all. First little secret….(shock, horror) this is my first meeting with Elyvilon. Well with by already low cred now teetering on the brink of total collapse just look at the tape editions Sokol Keep turned out for this. Absolutely magnificent.
Hopefully distracted by that we get to the music and the first firm steps of this US artist upon the fabled soil of Albion. A visitor, a traveller and an adventurer daring the shrouded isle. ‘Over Ice-Locked Waves’ is such an epic beginning. We get the sound of freezing wind and icy waters, the sense of mist all around and the slow, steady, careful progress. It is a lonely and foreboding sound no doubt but the sense of pure adventure conjoured by the synth sounds and the background noises is worthy of any Norse epic. The lighter synth sounds convey so much; you feel the danger and the wariness in the deep sounds but those lighter notes bring such a sense of wonder that you know why you are on this journey. And it is that which builds, the adventure slowly rising until it towers over the ice and becomes all. There is a sense of quiet awe, too. Moments of looking to the small things maybe; the frost on gloves, the chill on the skin. But then you see the land and there is nothing but the pounding of blood, of the spirit. You have arrived…
The opening moments of ‘The Stranger’ has such a lonely sound for me somehow. There is that wonder at the new still, but perhaps it has a bittersweet quality to it. It feels like an individual with that strange self of dislocation that can tingle the skin when all has changed. Trepidation, no one but yourself to look to for aid. But, oh, the world you are seeing. Strange string sounds rise and fall; discordant or eerie crescendo make it sound alien but somehow with time it comes together and maybe a language is learned and the spirit of the land begins to open up.
‘The Shimmering Flame Amidst The Moor’ is a quarter of an hour epic that paints a bleak and misty scene in my mind. A stillness, but a whisper all around of magic in this place that might seem barren but is steeped in history and lore, in the motion of the land and the people. Moors are implaccable, unforgiving but that does not mean they do not beat with a vivid heart and team with life. Just life here is different, quieter. Distant when strangers tread upon them. The melodies play; gently true, but play nonetheless around this like flickering light. The closer we get the stronger they dance and the rhythm becomes all…. until it falls silent and strong, deep, strident sound is all around us. Epic, strong, deep in sound and determined in beat. Dance becomes march, maybe away from what we found, but some of that spirit stays with us and a sense of purpose accompanies us. The land is with us, around us, speaking to us. And at the end the delicacy of that initial dance remains…
‘Bereft’ closes the work. A rolling cloud of deep synths blossom, a whisper of noise behind like drizzle. Then rain. A slow, languid melody which is the heart aching sound of the title fills the air. Bereft. But what has been lost on this journey? Perhaps a sense of your placce in the world; gone from one, a stranger still in another. Or perhaps it is the knowledge that a return must be made and although so much of the new land will remain in your soul, it can not all travel with you. The spirit of it still warms your soul, but it is more an echo and will remain that constant tugging on your heart.
It is a beautiful album; dungeons synth, ambient, touches of the masters like Vangelis and Tangerine Dream at their most ethereal, a sense of both exploration and finding your destiny in far places. Of course, as ever, it is simply what it draws from me and perhaps your journey will be different but, I guarantee, it will be no less thought provoking and enveloping.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 