Description
Now expanded to 2 CDs with many rare and unreleased tracks! Including a guest appearance by Fit & Limo.
The third album from Stone Breath, “Lanterna Lucis Viriditatis,” finds the band journeying further down the darkened paths they first showed us on their other CDs, “Songs of Moonlight and Rain” and “A Silver Thread to Weave the Seasons.”. The darkened deep woods folk and acoustic experimentalism Stone Breath conjured on their earlier recordings is here refined in a cauldron of sound that may well define “wyrdfolk” (a term coined by Stone Breath’s tiMOTHy to express the music that he and his friends make).
For “Lanterna Lucis Viriditatis,” Stone Breath founding member, tiMOTHy, is again partnered with Prydwyn (who appeared on the “… Silver Thread…” CD) and then-new members Ra Campbell, and Sarada. The diverse instrumentation that Stone Breath has been known for is here continued with acoustic guitars, banjos, flutes, whistles, sitar, dulcimer, harmonium, and many others being melded together by the band in their trademark ghostly earth songs. Strange new tunings, and beautiful harmony vocals have only added to Stone Breath’s magic bag.
With a darker sound than past albums, “Lanterna Lucis Viriditatis” finds tiMOTHy tracing a theme throughout the record: a silver thread weaving together such elements as St. John the Baptist, Osiris and Isis, John Barleycorn, Templar Knights, King Solomon, and Jesus Christ all shown in the light (or shadow as the case may be) of Stone Breath’s ever present nature poetry/observations.
The songs will speak louder than words: from the mysterious opening track to the subdued tones of COB’s “Solomon’s Song,” to the medieval dance, “Estampie” (actually a traditional Appalachian song somehow made more ancient by Renner’s clawhammer banjo and Prydwyn’s deft recorder and percussion), to the epic closing track, “Lanterna Lucis Viriditatis” will lead the listener on a journey through the night shadows of forgotten truths.
