I’ve been on an intense Ursula K LeGuin kick lately (hyperfixation, you might say?) Specifically, I’ve been enchanted by the Earthsea series, one of those masterpieces of fantasy literature that is marketed to YA audiences because the language is simple, but the storytelling itself can only be understood with multiple re-reads, decades apart. Ultimately, this is a series about learning one’s own potential, and how to mature and let go when you reach middle age and think you’ve missed the mark. But what keeps me around for the tough emotions is LeGuin’s reverence for the natural world. Like LeGuin, Cinder Well embraces nature as a key component of her work, using terse prose that is both impressionistic and highly exacting to convey her meaning.
Cinder Well (Amelia Baker) interweaves her time spent in Ireland with her youth in California, with music that pulsates with the ocean’s heartbeat and sings with Celtic sounds. Cinder Well’s music is trance-like, looping upon itself like a groovy ouroboros. Her lyrics are suggestive, evoking a feeling rather than any one narrative or viewpoint. With nods to figures like selkies and questing knights, Cadence really is excellent companion listening to Earthsea. But if that’s not your jam, it should also be the soundtrack to your personal pilgrimages.
(PS — if Cinder Well’s gothic folk trance is your thing, check out Abigial Lapell and the playlist she curated on Tidal).
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