Glacial Light, Music from the Edges of the World
Glacial Light is the creative vessel of Derek Corcoran, a musician and ecologist weaving folk, metal, and myth into songs that trace emotional journeys across time and place.This space is home to my evolving musical projects, rooted in stories of love, voyages, wonder, and memory.You’ll find here my concept album Runes of the Drift, released track by track over the year. Each song is a chapter in a mythical voyage, inspired by my own roots, travels, and dreams.📍 Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp
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Runes of the Drift, A Conceptual Album
This album tells the story of a nameless traveler, born in the high latitudes of the New World, under the endless skies of Patagonia.Though he walks the land of his birth, his soul is shaped by distant myths, the songs of his mother, and the legends of ancestors he never knew. A stranger among his own, he sets out across oceans and time, searching for belonging, truth, and home.Each song is a chapter in this odyssey, from whispered farewells, to wild encounters with pirates and trickster gods, to falling in love, and becoming a father.Through folk melodies, heavy riffs, and quiet reflections, Runes of the Drift explores exile, identity, memory, and the many lives we might have lived.In the end, the Traveler discovers that home is not a place on any map, it’s a space we carve in our hearts
Chapter I: Goodbye mother
The ship is ready. The anchors are nearly drawn. The winds of distant lands call, and yet the Traveler must first face the hardest farewell.
At the rugged port of his homeland, beneath windswept skies, he embraces his mother one last time. They have endured much together in this remote land. Now she remains behind, her love a tether across oceans of time.
Before parting, she presses a journal into his hands, a simple gift, meant to carry stories of his wandering life back to her when the sea finally returns him home.
As the sails rise and the distance grows, her voice and the land’s whispered song echo through him.And so he promises to write. To remember. To return, changed, yet still her son.
Chapter II: We are pirates
Quite soon after departing on his journey, the Traveler and his new crew find themselves pursued. As they sail through the cold waters, a pirate ship appears on the horizon, faster and larger than their own. With little choice, they steer into a hidden cove and hold their breath beneath the cliffs.
From their dark hiding place, they can hear the merry voices of the pirates drifting across the waves, bold, bloody, and full of life. The pirates sing with reckless joy, celebrating loot and freedom. For a moment, the Traveler listens and wonders: are they monsters, or simply another face of the sea’s wild spirit?
Chapter III: Moving Mountains
Fog hangs low and the hull heaves as if the ocean itself is drawing breath. Ahead, the surface buckles, dark ridgelines sliding under the keel, too steady, too vast to be waves. Someone whispers of wrecks. Someone else counts prayers. The traveler grips the rail as the ship goes briefly weightless and the timbers sing.Then the first back breaks the skin of the sea: a cliff of living dusk, an eye older than charts. More follow, slow, deliberate, immense, moving in long arcs that carve valleys the ship can learn to ride. Panic crests, then thins. The thunder underfoot becomes a rhythm; the pulse from below finds the traveler’s own. They are not hunters. They are moving mountains whales advancing and rising, shepherding the vessel through hidden trenches the crew would never have found alone.By night, their huffs are heard as peaceful sounds. By dawn, the cove and its fear are far behind, and the North opens like a cold, clear gate. The traveler writes to his mother in the small journal she gave him: “We were not spared, we were carried.” He closes the book knowing the sea is larger than his fear, and that some dangers are teachers when you dare to listen.
Chapter IV: The Long Passage North
Weeks blurred into each other as the traveler sailed ever northward. Each sunrise the same, each twilight stranger. Ice clung to the hull, stars haunted his dreams, and in the wind he heard a whisper: keep going.The constellations above began to shift. Unknown birds circled overhead, unfamiliar fish darted below. In every port and every passing conversation, he changed, slowly, subtly. He longed for the lands he left behind, but dreamed more and more of ancestral shores he had never seen.
Chapter V: The Shapeshifter’s veil
As the Traveler arrives on the haunting shores of Iceland, he encounters a strange figure by a lone fire: tall, wiry, red-haired, with scars at the corners of his lips. The man introduces himself with no name, yet his voice carries the weight of myth. They speak deep into the night, sharing tales of exile and misunderstood legacies. The man, as it turns out, is Loki, the shapeshifter, the trickster, the scapegoat. Though blamed by the gods for mischief and chaos, he reminds the Traveler of the treasures he once gave them: Sleipnir, Mjölnir, Gungnir. Fire flickers in his eyes as he speaks of pain, estrangement, and the bond with his children, the wolf, the serpent, the maiden of death. The Traveler listens, uncertain whether to trust the words… but haunted by them nonetheless.
Chapter VI: I am the wind
In the cold stillness of the North, the Traveler meets a presence he's known all his life, though never fully seen.The wind, harsh and relentless, shaped his youth in Patagonia. It bent trees and tempered souls. But here, beneath a sky of forgotten constellations, it reveals itself not just as weather, but as spirit: ancient, intimate, and fearsome.It is not comforting, but it is familiar. A whisper that became a voice. A trial that became strength.The wind has followed him across oceans and time, and now, it speaks:You are not alone, I am the wind.
Chapter VII: Just as we are
On his journey through shifting lands and whispered destinies, the Traveler finds love, not as a fleeting spark, but as a companion to walk the world beside him. Together, they live many lives: beneath the trees of Patagonia, in fireside towns of wandering souls, through questions of where they could have stayed.And yet, through all the imagined paths, one truth shines through:
They are perfect, just as they are.This song is the Traveler's ode to the one who walks beside him, his wife, his anchor, his wonder.
Chapter VIII: Longer
Time moves swiftly. The Traveler, now a father, finds his heart full of both love and fear. His own father was taken from him too soon, a loss that still shadows his steps. Now, with a young son at his side, the Traveler longs for time, to give his child what he himself had lost.
As he watches his son grow, every smile is a small miracle, every day a fragile gift. The Traveler knows he cannot halt the tides of life, but he makes a silent vow:
to be present, to be steadfast, for as long as life will grant him.
This is his song, a promise written not in myth or legend, but in the simplest of truths:
A father’s love, carried forward, longer.
Chapter IX: Dance Around the Fire
After a long day threading the forest paths, the traveler, his wife, and their son come upon a communal fire where roads and stories meet. Bowls are passed, names are traded, and then a flute lifts the night: “Danza del Oso”, an old Iberian tune that sets boots tapping. A circle forms and widens as more travelers step in; someone calls an airy An Dro from Brittany, the steps turning like millstones. Laughter rises; Irish reels spark, old-country melodies that run as quick as feet, as sure as heartbeat.
Drawn in, the family unpacks their own songs. The traveler grins and strikes the rhythm of the sea; together they play the song he’s carried across oceans, the pirates’ song they’ve sung at home and on the road. For a while, the fire is a little world: many tongues, one rhythm. As embers lift into the dark, the wind catches them and the circle breathes, home is not a place tonight, but a ring of hands and a tune everyone somehow knows.(Traditional threads woven in: “Danza del Oso” Spain; An Dro Brittany; Drowsy Maggie and the silverspear from Ireland. Original pirate motif from the traveler’s journey.)