Artist: Glaive Wielder
Title: Cave Routes
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Dale Of Shadows
I have to admit to having a rather big soft spot for the Virginian project Glaive Wielder and this physical release of his 2024 digital album Cave Routes is no exception. You see one of the things that Dale Of Shadows and others do so well is giving a second burst of awareness to glittering items amidst the ever flowing waters of dungeons synth.
‘Cave Routes’ is split into five passages, beginning with ‘Moon’ which very much sets the scene and the world. This is smooth, deep ambient music. There are the curious moments where notes and noises briefly flicker, caught by some light before we resume the descent; and it does feel like a descent to me. Just a gentle slope, but a journey down nonetheless. The sounds feels like being surrounded by minerals somehow. Maybe there’s that feel of the sound coming from hard but multifaceted surfaces. There is no sense of threat, no fear, just a simple wonder as a dark little world opens itself to us.
‘Shoal’ is less subdued. It rouses itself fully, the background drone wavering as the melody pushes forward then fades back again, or turns slowly. Perhaps I am just imagining the title in motion but there is a feeling of a gentle but irresistible surge and fall. Then we get the bright notes, phosphorescent light catching on something maybe. It is a sound that brings once more no sense of dread or fear but a wonder at something natural, or naturally magical slowly turning around me. Mysterious, beautiful and a secret to those who dare this cave.
‘Meteor’ is almost a lullaby, a sweet rocking sound with delicate music guiding it. Curuiosly it feels bright and something illuminated here is still. Sleeping? I don’t know but waking it seems…wrong. Selfish. ‘Origin’ offers at first a piano, deliberately picked notes, before the synths rise about it as we carefully follow a path deep within. Rich, slow and warm. Supportive even. The distortion grows but the purest notes rise above it like a veil of light suddenly discovered as we reach a ledge and peer out onto something quite majestic, quite beautiful and so very, very old…
The final cavern is ‘Coronet (Precipice Of Distortion)’ and perhaps the most cosmic of them for me. The distorted synth backwash, the soft but rich drone and the struck notes upon it with a softness between metal and dense wood. I feel as though somewhere, in a cave, the light from an unknown source shows me the music of the crystalline stalactites. The path is narrow, the fall either side deep, but the light and the music whsiper to me that I am safe, that I have to but follow them. You have to. This is a sight no one has seen possibly ever and the music is their voice. It is why we came.
Glaive Wielder have this beautiful, smooth and sedate approach. It has a grace to it, a sense of movement that is more like chilly waters flowing through measureless caverns but with light dancing within. Minerals and rock, creatures, who knows? But the journey to discover and to see is why we are here.
I may be lost, but I am not alone. I have the sights.
Gizmo
https://glaivewielder.bandcamp.com/
https://daleofshadows.bandcamp.com/album/lrdxn128-glaive-wielder-cave-routes
Walking The Liminal Space 