Artist: Helcaraxë
Title: Anar ar Isil
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Self released
Ah why do I do this to myself..? I have stated on a few occasions that my knowledge of Tolkien mythology is while better than ‘I watched the films’ is still to be regarded as shallow. Read the Hobbit two or three times. Read Lord Of The Rings. Read The Children Of Hurin and have a couple more ‘on the pile’. But yes I’m definitely feeling my toes missing the sea bed here.
But this is also music. Of the finest order.
‘The First Kinslaying’ creeps into life, cold and bitter; a deeply ominous unfurling of atmosphere that is like the breath of a frost giant. A certainty that no good can come of this. There is a desperate lonliness to it too for me, between the swelling of the music, the sense for me that when momentous events turn it is always easy to forget the individuals caught in that moment. A single tolling bell all that is left in the end…
‘Exodus’ is a sound of rain and maybe resignation. Things must be done, a leaving is demanded. A journey of no enthusiasm. A solemn drum beat, shadows walking away with the harpsichord melody of their memories trailing behind them maybe… But also there are moments here of a rich and strong melody. A strength behind each step. Some things must be done. It is simply the way of life.
‘An Oath, A Curse’ slides deeply into the darkness. The music here is full of rich old school whispers and that perfectly etched medieval feel. I always hark back to Arcanum’s ‘Dark Age Of Reason’ and those touches of Dead Can Dance when I hear such accomplished writing and arrangements. The weaving of melodic layers, the timing of the surges and the falls. This is painting with music in the classical style of grandeur but also of the emotion of the individual spirit at the core of the story.
‘The Grinding Ice’ is the Helcaraxë, a sound of struggling, slow footfalls as the world turns bleak and white-grey. The creaking of the ice beneath, the dismal melody pressing in as the sounds of cracking, of thunder surround. It is relentless and gnaws at hope. It takes all, offers nothing and still they must go on.
‘A Sacrifice Of Triumph’ has a call to announce it, a great horn crying out. A sign of arrival? I have no idea but it feels as though a warmth slowly seeps in after the ice. But the triumph is not one of ecstatic joy, but more of relief, perhaps some inward pride at having arrived. As I say, the story itself is unknown to me but I feel that relief as much as any emotion. Something has been left behind, not just in the leaving but out there, on the ice. Family? Friends? Maybe a part of everyone who survived but also there is something new inside everyone. A knew, gently glowing ember of knowledge. There is still a coldness to the stage, but the music feels like something else more hopeful but no less sad sliding out from under the suffocating grey.
‘The First Dawn’ rises, a hallowed sound of voices heralding it. For perhaps the first time the sense of warmth to the music begins to spread. It has the softest of glows to it; hazy but set against what has gone before I am left with a sense of arrival, and of a simple softness. It is the moment that softly pushes to the background the chaos and tragedy that is the tumultuous existence which has brought you here. The feeling might last but a short time but it is real. Birdsong, colours of gold and of green, a place that knows nothing of your past an simply knows its own.
A place for you to learn maybe.
Anar ar Isil is full of such masterful strokes. If something can be rich and retain just that touch of rawness in the way it offers the emotions of the characters it speaks of, then this does just that. It took me along its journey and offered a way into the tale behind the images. It has a depth and a non-judgemental way to the swathes of music, a storytelling that has a simplicity and yet spares no detail to the world.
I guess more reading is added to ‘the pile’.
Enjoy this, take a journey but do not judge. Simply experience.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 