1. |
Return to the Hovel
02:22
|
|||
|
Your pattering footsteps on the forest floor lead you to a deserted shelter. Your journey has taken you over rocks and swamps and under the woods. Respite awaits as you clamber through the entrance to the hovel. Light seeps in through the wattled branches in the walls and roof. This, you think, is a place to rest and contemplate the forces that brought you here and prepare for the other side of time.
|
||||
2. |
Breathed and Bemornen
03:29
|
|||
|
Dusting off the writings of the priestess you mutter the hallowed words she left. Disembodied whispers fill your ears. This is the closest you have felt any voice in your mortal life. You are filled with a sensation you could only describe conflictingly as both a chill and a warmth. As you listen, you recall vividly her fasting struggle and the peace she attained.
|
||||
3. |
Accretion Craft
03:12
|
|||
|
You pace underneath the canopy, collecting items for your spell. As a guardian of the old arbored interior, you seek items to build a protective living wooden wall. Every seed you sow is a sentinel to grow. You know your old magic well and see it in practice as trunks, vines, roots, and branches expand and fuse together.
|
||||
4. |
Council of the Dryads
05:09
|
|||
|
The bells toll and the dryads have assembled. You have been asked by the Ring of Wizards to scout and learn of the dryad plot to dispel the Trolljarl and his court. You are hidden in the frith and you thank the heavens for the cover that the rains bring to your steps. Fearful of discovery, you remain at a distance. It is difficult to discern the fluted whistling of the wind through the dryads’ branched arms, so you take better notes of their movements and expressions. The wizards will have to be satisfied with this position you stake.
|
||||
5. |
The Boor's Honeyed Mead
02:25
|
|||
|
In the hovel, you find several old bottles filled with a drink or potion of some sort. Parched from your journey through the swamps, your thirst guides you to taste the bottled contents. Decanted, a sweet fermented fluid graces your tongue. Abandoning caution, the mead races down the gullet voluminously. You find yourself telling tales and singing songs to the spiders and mice feverishly in an accelerando. You are their bard until the yarns you spin are so dizzying that your consciousness warps and fades away for the night.
|
||||
6. |
Working Wards
03:43
|
|||
|
You awaken to three witches casting a spell over your horizontal body. A foreign shadow climbs out of your torso. The witches work their wards, burning flames and throwing salts. They incant a few holy words in hopes that nothing like that happens to you again.
|
||||
7. |
Trek of the Treants
03:21
|
|||
|
Something is afoot. Perhaps it is the forest itself. You are still, yet the trees pass you by. What is this enchantment? Is this the plan of the dryads? You are a witness to the migration of the Treants. This frith is more alive than you could possibly know.
|
||||
8. |
Verdant Rejuvenation
02:50
|
|||
|
The wizards, unsatisfied with your report, have transformed you into a sapling. Now you will better learn the language of the forests. Your roots listen and speak at the same time. You do not feel tired.
|
||||
9. |
Quailing Souls
01:47
|
|||
|
In the heavy cool mist, the sounds of the frith are muffled. Huddled with your traveling companions, you slowly sing your fears and woes into the fire. May the mist mask your fellowship as you complete your spell.
|
||||
10. |
To Shout at the Beard
04:00
|
|||
|
You approach the throne of the Trolljarl. You came to this hall knowing he was already blinded with his own power, but it is a surprise to witness him actually blinded by his own flowing and mystical beard. Frustrated by his continuing ignorance of your pleas and warnings, your voice turns into a flock of sparrows and finches that sing truth into the Beard in hopes to reach the poisoned maze of the mind behind it. After your litany, some hairs of the Trolljarl’s beard turn to worms. They feed your birds and he begins his defensive retort. You feel your own birds tire and begin to fall horizontal sickened by his hairy worms. Once more, you muster your powers to shout truth and sense to the Beard.
Your finches again fly.
and all souls of that hall
recall your departing words to the thralls,
“The truth never lies.”
|
||||
11. |
Wakening Clades
04:49
|
|||
|
The ancient tree has been stalled and stagnant for too long. You begin your accretion magic and the diversions of each branch slowly and surely multiply. You whisper into the roots and send your tiniest voice into a spore filled potion that you cast around the frith. The woods are waking now. The Woven Wealden Wall is completing itself.
|
||||
12. |
Vigil for the Departing
03:04
|
|||
|
You waited for a month by the priestess’s bedside. You tended to her as she prepared to leave. She taught you her final lessons without a word. Now she is gone and left you with a haunting peace. This is still her frith, you think as you end your vigil.
|
||||
13. |
Fugol Conjuration
02:25
|
|||
|
You resign to wait a fortnight for the Trolljarl to change his mind. To pass the time, you conjure visions and illusions of fowl to thanes and thralls near to the throne. If the Torlljarl will not listen, his subjects will.
|
||||
14. |
Wandrodon Losod
02:31
|
|||
|
“What hath wrought this curse upon me?” you mutter. You have traveled for days, but the Woven Wealden Wall has led you back to the hovel without fail again and again. This is the fourth or fifth time you have returned. You cannot say for sure. You could say you are lost, but you know exactly where you are.
|
||||
15. |
||||
|
You have heard word that the attendants of the Trolljarl have been haunted in their nightmares and daymares by visions of crying finches. At first the finches were playful, some found them flying in entertaining formations; a walking tree, a curtain, a juggling jester. But the more familiar they became to those in the hall of the Trolljarl, the more it was noticed that these finch visions were shedding tears. It is said that puddles of tears are appearing all over the court. In empty goblets saline drops are seen and tasted. Those near the Trolljarl fear they are mad. Your magic is affecting this corner of the frith for better or worse.
|
||||
16. |
Gathering Imps
02:41
|
|||
|
For nights now you had assumed you had crossed outside of the imps’ domain, but after a heavy rainfall, you hear them beating their midnight drums and approaching closer to your camp. You whisper to your companions plans to capture one and barter for an escape from their distasteful pranks.
|
||||
17. |
Folly in Trolldom
01:22
|
|||
|
It is possible to enter the mind of a wizard, but it is costly on your powers. After determining how much of your own sanity you can risk, you arrange the clades of the ancient tree in the direction of the Trolljarl. The labyrinth of his mind appears to you, but you cannot lay down chopped clades fast enough to chart a course through his traps. Panicking, you begin the taxing spells to abort this psychic journey.
|
||||
18. |
Eldred Rites
04:04
|
|||
|
After a tiring week of tearful birded visions you find the Trolljarl ill in his bed. Frightened for your ruler’s soul and your own tomorrows, you call for the traveling witch to either heal or perform the ancient rites of death and discoronation. She comes with her sticks, stones, bones, feathers, herbs, and cards and lays down her spell on the Beard. You witness her slow magic at work but you know not what occurs. She told you there would be peace at the end so that is all you can think. In your dreams that night, you feel a great weight lifted and see no birds.
|
||||
19. |
Sweorcende
06:08
|
|||
|
You have completed administration of the Eldred Rites. The Trolljarl’s mind had lost it’s final grasp on the realm and the bearded body went swiftly after. You leave his dust in the court for his thanes and take the crown to the ancient tree to secure the Woven Wealden Wall. You have a good deal of certainty in your rituals and magics although you know nothing is ever to be the same here. You know the magic in loss and the magic in growth. You struggle with another spell to induct a flux in this frith.
|
||||
20. |
Wash of Time
01:10
|
|||
|
Grown up from a sapling you feel the rain wash over your leaves. Another clade. Another branch. Another breeze. You are made of water and filtered golden light. Drinking from roots is now your honeyed mead and the spiders still love to listen to your verdant song.
|
||||
Joe DeGeorge Providence, Rhode Island
Composer.
Sax.
Synthesizers.
Keyboards.
Bach Revisionist.
Wizard.
If you like The Frith, you may also like:
The Lovegoods (EP)
by The Lovegoods
supported by 4 fans who also own “The Frith”
The Lovegoods definitely wrock my world. Their music makes me wanna jump and dance and sing my heart out.
go to album
Got Bark?
by Tianna and the Cliffhangers
supported by 4 fans who also own “The Frith”
go to album
In the Cupboard
by Harry and the Potters
supported by 4 fans who also own “The Frith”
go to album
Hong Kong's Enor D reinterprets nursery rhymes as noise pieces with elements of musique concrete on this playful new album.
go to album
Imagination/Meditation
by Lucas Brode & G. Calvin Weston
This collaboration between guitarist Lucas Brode and drummer G. Calvin Weston is a freewheeling hybrid of experimentalism, jazz, and more.
go to album
Symphony No 1 - Winter
by Douglas Schmidt and John Oliver
Improvised in a single stunning take, the compositions on “Symphony No 1: Winter” are hypnotic and enveloping sheets of sound.
go to album
Languoria
by Sofie Birch & Antonina Nowacka
Complex, layered electroacoustic songs that tiptoe toward the avant-garde while always remaining solidly tuneful.
go to album
