ArArtist: Granite Skull
Title: Tales Fae The Tolbooth
Type: EP
Label: Digital / MiniCD / Self Released
One of the reasons dungeon synth and related and connected worlds resonate so much with me, aside from my long, long TTRPG existence which on the whole along with friends (many met through it) has been perversely one of my main ways of keeping a grip on ‘reality’, is that like all good music and allegory it’s often seemingly simple approach finds those gaps in your defences that release the crushed up, crumpled pressure of suppressed emotional stress. Long sentence and a badly constructed replacement for ‘it allows you space to feel’. But I like long sentences to give me distance from the truth they speak.
As often can be the case this came along at a perfect moment. Or it fitted into the moment. Or something. Granite Skull and a little peek into the history of a landmark in Aberdeen. The Tolbooth.
Twenty odd seconds into ‘Far Hav Ti Bin?, Mr Williamson’ and a chord hits me so deeply that my entire wall simply disappears. It’s as though the most gentle of hands has brushed aside the world around me and I am there, feet upon stone, gazing back into the layers of history around one place. There’s a fleeting moment, a reconnection to ‘The Highbury Working’ by Alan Moore and Tim Perkins which peeled back the veils of another place through the haze of time, but then I am back to the TolBooth. A pulsing vibrant life is here, a little sweet melancholy like salt that brings out the natural flavour in a dish, and then a strange moment that feels like a precursor, a short view of what is to come. The synths grow darker, deeper, reminding or enlightening us to the notion that history has its own shadows even on a bright sunny day. Beuatiful, prog woven layers and melody. Soft waves but not weak ones.
‘Mither Kirk Dungeon’ has a dark, droplet like piano, an echoing haunting sound that briefly summons cold stone, an emptiness, and ‘The Witch Trials’ open. Again the pulsing, almost slow dancing music rises and has both an aire of history somehow and a sense of darkness, madness in the occasional sound which might be laughter and the horror and absurdity in this corner. It’s very, very strange the things that hide away in a place.
‘Skeletons In The Wall’ in contrast, with the sound of running water that seems crystal clear, has a tranquillity to it. There is some sense of rest, a settling of bones as the waters pass over and around. Strange perhaps with the history of the place, but perhaps the dead know only rest in the end. And here they stay…
‘The Cobbled Road / Field Recording’ has such a rich, almost seventies soundtrack richness to the melody music. Its as though the history that you have just wandered through falls away once more and you see the Tolbooth as it is now, except that what you see and hear is richer as you can see the roots upon which it has been built. The current world lives on, and around it. Just another part of its history. A pipe band, itself harking back through time to bring it to the present seems the perfect metaphor for the journey of this little gem of a work takes us through.
Memory lives in places they tell us, sagely. This is the perfect example of the way music can tease out the spirit of a place, turn it over, slowly, and let the kaleidoscope of its times cycle through your mind.
Even if you can’t get there, spend a little time in Aberdeen with Granite Skull as your careful guide. It’s a gentle, compassionate trip indeed.
Gizmo
Tales Fae The Tolbooth | Granite Skull
And as a primer for further reading Aberdeen Tolbooth
Walking The Liminal Space 