Ball of Wax 58 Songs: DREKKA+DARRYL BLOOD – “Hibernal Hymn, The 40th Night”

Longtime BoW friend Darryl Blood (who just keeps getting weirder and weirder and I love it) has collaborated with Drekka, a more recent arrival to our musical family, to bring us this “Hibernal Hymn.” Hibernal, of course, means “of, relating to, or occurring in winter” (and no I didn’t just look that up, how dare you?), making this a perfect piece for our wintry compilation. And it does sound like winter – specifically, like the middle of the night after a snow storm, when the sky is darker than dark and everything around you is covered in a thick white blanket. It’s soft and quiet and beautiful, but not entirely comfortable due to the piercing cold. The bed of drone and hiss is the snow, the meandering piano a few stray flakes tumbling down through a street light. You stop for a few minutes – not nearly long enough, but as long as you’ve got – and take it all in, watching each flake fall. Then the spell is broken and you shake your head and go inside. Or skip back to the beginning for another dose of hibernal magic.