Style: dungeon synth
Thoughts: Sometimes I feel like I'm in a time capsule. Listening to some mid 2010's dungeon synth is wild sometimes. The genre was just coming back to prominence after nearly a decade of being lost to time. Some of these early works have some truly fascinating and incoherent moments in them. Others have moments of brilliance.
Ithildin has a bit of both... there are moments of pure wonder on this album. There are also moments where I just have to scratch my head asking what on earth was going on during the recording of this part. At its best Ithildin is a journey through celestial realms, traveling alongside frozen comets as they float through the night sky. At its worst the album is an assortment of random notes played in quick succession.
Arthuros' debut is obviously an experiment. The album is minimalistic, almost to a fault. There are only one or two things going on at any given moment. It's enough to create music, but rarely enough to create a dense atmosphere or anything of the sort. This does not mean that it is bad however, it seems like it's an intentional limitation instead.
I love this limitation personally. It feels like there are just a few ideas present and that allows Arthuros to play around with them just a bit more than if there were more instruments. There are points where the melodies dance around like sprites on a spring. Sometimes they succeed, other times they fall flat, but they still are fascinating to listen to.
This is one of those albums where I don't necessarily enjoy all of it, but I find it absolutely a joy to listen to. Its so innocent and so full of hope and ideas that may or may not come to fruition that I just have to give it the proper due. This is absolutely the kind of hidden gem that I love finding when doing deep dives into genres. It only drives me thirst for new (to me) and interesting music more.
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