Artist: Skuggkonungen
Title: Ett Skelet Styr Staden
Type: Album
Label: Digital / Heimat Der Katastrophe
I have to admit up front that though I have been aware of, and purchased from Heimat Der Katastrophe before for some reason this Milan based DIY label always manages to confuse me. No idea why to be honest, but perhaps my utter lack of knowledge of most of the artists they put out leads it. And maybe finding them via searching for random Mork Bork RPG related stuff didn’t help. But they clearly are a very hard working and, just as good, distinctive label. And perusing their latest drop, this album really, really stood out for me.
Skuggkonungen are a Swedish project sworn to the analogue ways and this was my first proper introduction to them (besides a little browsing which now will have to be redoubled).
This is music with an accompanying short story with the physical release that angles itself also to be inspiration for an RPG scenario….which of course again brings back to the music.
The album opens quietly, slowly. The sound is of stillness and darkness, the falling notes against the synth wash casting a distant eye over a place so eerie, so unlike any other city that it cannot help but mix awe into the sense of eternal death. It is strangely, weirdly beautiful somehow. ‘Mooring On A Gloomy Morning’ is the price of arrival, the silent waters parting for your ship. A once thriving city now empty of the joy of life, its hope against the cursed ruled a prisoner, the adventurers the throw of the dice. Careful, quiet, soft musical steps bring us here. You can feel the water lapping but all sound is swallowed by the death city.
In the city step amongst ‘The Soul Looters’. Or their leavings, anyway. A dismal journey through a people bereft of purpose and real, vibrant life. Soulless. The music is grey, almost as though it is somehow distant. It brings out the feel of a city to me, one not quite complete. The melody is bereft of hope, but it builds sounds that suggest silent buildings, slow moving streets, tangible but no more real than ghosts. ‘Twilight Of The Blades’ begins to twinkle with a little life, an edge of spirit. A brief flash and surge through the dead to their goal.
‘No Chains’ has a sound of dark, damp stone, water dripping. It almost feels as though time is counted only in this place as the city simply is. A strange corner in a place that measures such things in long, slow breaths. Is this the release of hope and the fading of what took the city?
‘The Dirge Of A Dying City’ I find strangely, almost indescribably, beautiful. Perhaps we don’t understand the city, now. It has been changed, no more and no less than any conqueror but, yet, it seems to simply want to be. The music feels as though, in its slow, grey, minimal sound that the city has no anger, no joy, no greed. It is a place of quiet and calm and yet it has stolen so much without a thought. And it makes me think, it truly makes me think… what does the city, the buildings, the stone want? Is it content with these ghosts or does it want the vibrant chaos of life returned. ‘When Ghosts Fade’ is the result of this tale; ghost fade in a gentle, subtly rippling sound with no fight. But who is actually left?
‘The End’ is that. Have the heroes, the blades, succeeded? Rescued the sorceress, freed the city from death? Or have they simply opened the veil to allow the souls within to move on? The music has no triumph to it; it is a moment of quiet, but perhaps calm. Unseen, unsung, they go back the way they came. The ghosts have faded but has the city faded too?
I was enthralled and amazed at how this album made me think about what might be a simple tale; a skeleton ruler, a city of lost souls and a people bereft of will. A group determined to rescue it. And yet there is an undeniable if strange beauty to the world described. It is as though the city in the music has shown its own personality in this guardian of the dead; no intention to spread but simply to be allowed to be.
That is how adept, how beautifully crafted this album is. Skuggkonungen has not just offered a tale in perfectly judged music, but also one that led me further in, made me wonder about a side rarely considered in such tales; the city of the dead itself.
That is just masterful storytelling for me.
Gizmo
HDK 221 † Ett Skelett Styr Staden | SKUGGKONUNGEN | Heimat Der Katastrophe
Walking The Liminal Space 