~| Endless shimmering glissandi
Crackling pizzicato
Coal black, turbulence holes of bass drones
But otherwise empty
No planets, no meteorites
If anything, perhaps fine dust clouds of exploded music
You float there, somewhere between pleasure and fear |~
Hello Steemit! For todays review we will be taking a listen to a Norwegian band with a pretty expansive library of music. Starting out in the early 90's as a Black Metal group with a heavy influence of Scandinavian folk stories, they continue as an experimental collective of musicians.
Besides their early work in the Norwegian black metal scene, they've also made the movie soundtrack for films like the Norwegian cult classic "Svidd Neger". They have also been working on more experimental albums, like the one we'll be starting off with. Perdition City.
Perdition City
This record is the groups 5th release, and it has a style that is more in the vein of Industrial, dark ambient and trip hop. The album starts off with a huge drum beat followed by sudden change to a more jazz lounge vibe. This is noticeable through the album, a juxtaposition of light and dark in the thematic movements. Exploring the effect of dynamics in sound on the listener in a way that is almost cinematic.
The album moves on to "Porn Piece Or The Scars Of Cold Kisses", another track that has this dark trip hop vibe to it. Here the band starts introducing more synth elements, showing a further distancing from their more traditional metal roots. The track turns into a psychedelic free-float for a while, before sucking you back down to the surface.
Other tracks like "We Are The Dead"(a slow ambient/spoken word track) and "Catalept"(An intense industrial trip hop track, with a sample that I think was used in the film "Requiem For A Dream") are more like short filler moments, lasting about half as long as the other tracks on the album
The track we're gonna start off is the opener from this album, "Lost In Moments". I recommend you check out the album in it's entirety, it's a great trip to go through.
Lost In Moments
Childhood's End
This is their 9th release, and here we once again get a whole new sound to process. This time they've drawn from the psychedelic rock treasurechest of the 1960s. Containing tracks from bands like 13th Floor Elevators and Jefferson Airplane, this album is like a time machine back to when people were fighting in the streets for an end to war and a hope for Peace. The cover invokes these strong memories for most, due to it featuring a picture from when armies were using Napalm bombs in the vietnam war.
The opening track "Bracelets Of Fingers" starts out by chanting a mantra of "Love", with harmonious chords lifting us up in their glory. The track has a very uplifting feeling to it, though at the same time it has this feeling of melancholy. The album moves on to "Everybody's Been Burned". This is a slow psychedelic drone jam. Other tracks like "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night" have a kinda western feel to it, almost like riding on horseback through an indescribable landscape.
The track I wanna show you from this record is a cover from the 60s group "Gandalf", and it's a floaty, dreamy, distorted rock ballad soaked in hammond organs. Here is "Can You Travel in the Dark Alone"
Can You Travel In The Dark Alone?
Terrestrials
The final record I wanna show you isn't strictly speaking just a record by Ulver, since they collaborated with the British drone doom group Sunn O))). It is however a record that I would really recommend you check out. It is another stylechange for ulver, bringing their cinematic dark ambient elements into thundering drones of Sunn O)))'s sweet tube amps.
This album is split up into 3 sessions, which were recorded mostly as 3 jam sessions between the two groups. Starting off with "Let There Be Light", it sets the tone as a heavy meditative dose of vibrations. This is a description of the recording session by Stephen O'malley of Sunn O)))
"I remember the vibe in the room back then was more rāga than it was rock. And despite the fact that the walls were literally shaking from volume, it was actually quite a blissed out, psychedelic session. I wanted to preserve that vibe in the final mix"
Source: Wiki
