review by: Tom Orgad

Considering their rightfully achieved status of a multi-disciplinarian group, it is not surprising to witness Ulver’s latest release being absolutely devoid of any metal presence. Being chosen to record the soundtrack for "Lyckantropen," a Swedish short film, the Norse post-extremists deliver this time an album of pure atmospheric ambient tracks, occasionally adjoining the stylistic definitions of trip-hop and pure experimentation.

As not having watched the aforementioned movie yet, I will not be able to comment about the correspondence of the recorded tracks with the actual filmed scenes, but merely review the soundtrack as an independent musical piece. Luckily, I find it to deliver a rather significant artistic value for itself, even when devoid of its overlapping visual medium.

According to the promotional information sheet, the basic guideline for each track of the CD is to feature improvisations over simple three-chord progressions. With such a limiting starting point, Ulver had quite a challenge set for themselves: to maintain a level of genuine self-expression, in spite of a given harmonic restriction and ominous required correlation to a given context of a written script plot. The band had chosen to face the task by wielding a cruel intellectual manipulation over the listener: by unfurling in front of the beholder a rich, multi-layered sonic structure. The music of Ulver is able to undermine one of the most suppressed and problematic issues of human existence: the sense of time.

Each track is constructed of paralleling usually calm, pastoral, circular melodic and rhythmic parts. Each part or abstract notion bears a different idea or feel: be it a specific instrument, a varied timbre of sound, a singular sense articulation, an emotional form of expression or even simply a sound effect. Each such entity is imparted with its own, self-determined praxis of evolvement. When attempting to catch the essence of the music, the listener imperatively has to focus his centre of attention on a chosen motive amongst the plenitude of symbiotic existence, a choice that is most likely to be made arbitrarily. When observing the chosen channel of expected evolvement, the beholder mainly analyses his object of focal attention, yet still absorbs the overall atmosphere constructed by the adjoining of the multiple, paralleling evolution. Therefore, as concentrating on a certain current, when the present stealthy evolvement actually takes part on one of the others, one gets a most eerie sense of confusion. He sporadically exists in a certain system of time, yet a higher, global narrative seems to brutally defy his, implying that his self-created virtue of existence is false and improper. After reaching that awful realization and experiencing a few moments of uncertainty, the listener usually gets thrown out of his current path of being, being compelled by an irresistible urge to locate the actual legit level of action.

Then, the most awful feeling captures him: floating in the undefined gap of no attention, he experiences the horrible state of, shall I say, “negative eternity” (reminding me very much of the works of writers such as Sartre or Handke). This terrifying disorientation is usually soon dissolved by an alternative focusing - only to be resolved once again by returning to the inevitable axis of void, making one face once again his true ineffable, pointless, instable randomness.

I am not a great expert of the ambient genre. Therefore, I can’t deny the possibility of the existence of dozens of different artists practicing the exact same method in order to reach similar results. However, if the Ulver title is enough of a reason to introduce metal fans to such creation - I enthusiastically encourage it, be it original or not.