Artist: Murk Sage
Title: Dernhold: Secret Of The Mist
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Relics Of The Eternal City
I love an adventure hook. Just look at this one: “Derhold Castle emerges from the mist only once a century, during the 13th full moon of the year (when it occurs). The prospect of riches would entice many more, if not for the rumoured curse. It is said a spirit haunts its halls; few enter and even less return. Pray tell, what will come of your adventure?”Wraps that in a lovely cover by Caress Of The Void, slip in the CD and prepare to be transported.
‘The Mist Clears’ and the bright notes, sun glancing off little rarely sighted battlements, offer a swell of music like excitement and mistery unfolding in your belly. Beautiful runs of notes beckon you in, an almost subliminal but deeply felt undercurrent of darker synth perhaps the nagging warning in your mind. Until, there you are. Alone? Perhaps with companions, and facing the myth in stone and ivy, dust and distant time.
‘Rooms Untouched By Time’ give the lie to some of that. The sharp but gentle notes open up on a place removed from the world. The music is sunlit somehow, but though heavy with age there feels that the melody is portraying a strange and still freshness. Nothing has aged, all is as it should be. And yet…
‘Around Every Corner, A Shadow Looms’ brings a darker presence. The melody dancers, sharp as ever but behind it the scene shifts. Darker music casts slow shadows across it, seemingly unobserved. Behind the light the music offers the real sense of time that this hidden world has upon its shoulders, a darker mantle and the whsipering of a curse. It is gorgeous music; steady and flowing and full of an almost playful storytelling: The inquisitive and adventurous intruders, the stalking of the deeper tones flowing across stone, around corners….
‘Stained Glass Ruminations’ slow the exploration. Notes like like breaking through differing colours, some light, some dark, many between and the pattern they spread offers a contemplative beauty to the stone that it touches. It intrigues as to what it meant to the previous inhabitants, but above all the music entrances… and you notice that ‘Arcane Inscriptions Cover The Walls’. This is the moment the music truly turns. Gone are those light notes, this is serious now. The shapes shift, the deeper darkness in the music offers a sinister interpretation, dark magic perhaps. The seriousness of your predicament laid bare.
‘The Phantom Arises’ somehwere in Dernhold. Slowly but determined. A shivering dark swell of synth music draws its power together. Then the music stalks onwards. Perhaps it hides in the shadows you have previously noticed, perhaps it is elsewhere, feeling its way towards you but the beauty and intrigues of the perfect place has gone. The phantom has revelaed its long, dark talons….
‘Chased // Cornered’ is the unsettling sound of slightly discordant notes, perhaps your own confusion and rising panic as the deep timpani sounds and synth clouds surge into the hallways, blocking exits, closing doors. It knows the turns and twists of the castle, you do not. It herds you, prey and slowly like those deep slow notes, you realise this.
‘Another Spirit Haunts These Halls’, is the dark organ sound of your new life. If there was treasure here, you have not found it. If there was a mystery to uncover and overcome, you have failed. You are here now, ethereal and gliding with the music. Alone. Forever. Simple notes fall, horror and misery in their realisation, perhaps a slow resignation. Perhaps this was ever your fate. Your voice rises but is fading, drowned by the shadows and the curse and the fate of the foolish for centuries.
‘Blanketed By Mist Once More’ is the castle of Dernhold, then. Soft clouds of music, a whisper and a gentle breath on your cheek and no more. Once more Castle Dernhold is fading into tavern talk and bardic tales. Smiles and jests of bravado that will never be tested until, perhaps a century hence, one more like you will set off for those fabled halls and face…
Well, you…
This is a beautiful musical tale. A carefully and lovingly crafted one to fire you imagination or settle you down in a chair one warm night. Everyone needs that, don’t they?
Gizmo
Dernhold: Secret Of The Mist | Murk Sage | Relics of the Eternal City
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