Artist: Hill Dwarf
Title: Hill Dwarf
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Cassette
This has apparently been out a little over a month but as I tripped over it by a complete fluke (saw it once in a story on a feed I guess I follow but can’t remember who) it’s brand new to me and after a few listens made it a fine Bandcamp Friday purchase. Why? Well…
Literally the first note of opener ‘A Meeting Of Heroes At Mossy Tavern’ made me got “wt…f…?” The sound, one note, wavers ad wanders as a weird wobbling interference fills out the background. It lends such an immediate thought provoking atmosphere; like coming across an ancient recording somewhere in the dusty shelves of a long dead academic, behind long forgotten scrolls and strange objects in jars. It is slow and deeply solemn and riddled with the artefacts of age…. age so dense that it seems to come alive as the song goes on. It is truly strange, probably unique, and manages to be both bittersweet and vaguely disturbing together. I’m not sure Mossy Tavern, at least at the time of this, was a place I’d want to be…
‘Walking Among The Glass Columns’ has a persistent sound glancing off glass, which adds an air of tension with that title. The sounds around ebb and flow and have a pulsing pace within that scare me with all this glass around. No malevolence, just fear of my own clumsiness and the music urges me to go faster in this delicate place. ‘Poppies On The Hill’ is an introspective passage after the fear of breakages, a pondering upon things whilst surrounded by beauty.
I really have to mention the soundscapes here. This is not simply synth driven dungeon music; it trills and murmurers and wraps around you a haunting electronica, the kind of sound that in the past would involve multiple wirres being plugged in, pulled out and dials turned. It has a beautiful earthy feel, almost like something from the more contemplative moments of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. It is unexpected and such a joy to hear.
‘Deep In The Cave Of The Ice Elves’ exemplifies this: The buzzing of white noise manipulation, the steady beat, the tidal wash of synths and the bending of notes create a truly eerie, otherworldly affair. The arrangement it just immaculate; layering and variations on a theme come and go like the most graceful of touches.’The Potion Master’s Cabinet’ has a curious and almost disorganised feel. Bubbling liquids disturb the background, the melody is like the random notation of a chaotic mind, but so fine is that potion makers mind that it all comes together.
‘The Turnips Have Grown Appendages’ is worrying even before you get past the title… once within we are in some weird, deranged, Victorian waltz. A slightly broken calliope, slows and starts and wobbles away, presumably with dancing legumes….it so funny and lovely and just a little barmy. Oh I love this so much…
‘Procession Of The Beetle-Shelled Army’ is, by contrast, a solemn and serious affair, a sense of a time honoured tradition to it. ‘The Princess Found A Cursed Mirror’ by contrast has the high organ sound of the gothic to it and yet the melody which rises is sweet and seductive…until it has you and then the world turns a little dark, rivulets of notes rise, almost like a fine Giallo soundtrack by Goblin and the curse is free. Again this blend of electronica is utterly sublime and deft.
‘Will The Trollocs Attack In The Rain?’ was immediately answered by my brain with ‘then kick them in the bollocks and give them pain’….But thankfully there is only the fear of such a vile thing. It’s the weather; he rain makes you miserable, the music almost sighing as you think up all the misfortunes that such a night has brought and what else it might have in store. A slow and wary track indeed.
‘Balefire From the Belltower’ has the bells and the trumpets of warning, a short and curious affair that feels as though those trumpets were indeed just townsfolk… I wonder what happened to them…? but no time as it ‘Running Through The Moonlit Fog’ which if ever there was a track that sounded perfectly like the title it is this. Fast, giddy running notes as the slow, cold eerie for fog synths wrap around the world, hiding it from you. But run we must! Little Legs flashing by in frantic notes, slow baleful mist and eerie impassive moonlight watching..
Only to find that ‘Racoon Bandits Have Occupied the Abandoned Keep’. Good luck to them I say. I find this passage strangely happy, a smile coming as the sedate and pleasant tune has strange scurrying sounds in the background as no doubt the masked miscreants practice for their grand bouts of larceny.
This is a wonderful and unique project to chance upon. It has a lovely humour to it but also fine storytelling in the compositions and just an incredible blend of electronica flitting through the dungeon synth. It has a quirky sense of age to it, leaving you the listener as though you have indeed discovered an old, forgotten world hiding under a dusty table or a long abandoned castle. It is deeply musical, eclectic in its tunes and arrangements and frankly perfect for the approach of Yule, or any time when a little smile and a little pondering on the worlds that might be is required.
Please, give this treasure some attention.
Gizmo
Walking The Liminal Space 