| Ulver Perdition City: Music to an Interior Film |
In their last outing, Ulver set the works of 18th-century poet, artist and mystic William Blake to a dark techno-trance backdrop which moved far beyond the boundaries of their Norwegian . Their latest CD, "Perdition City: Music to an Interior Film," seems to take its cues from the Surrealists and from James Joyce's seminal and impenetrable "Finnegans Wake." In "Perdition City" Ulver tries to capture the meanderings of the mind as it falls into sleep, creating an eerie, hypnotic and disturbing soundtrack of the subconscious mind. As in dreams and fugues, ideas break off abruptly. The driving rhythmic synthesizer line which opens up "Lost in Moments" quickly fades to a haunting, melancholy saxophone, backed by the ghostly echo of a sung-spoken vocal. The acoustic piano riff that begins "Porn pieces or the scar of cold kisses" gradually becomes swallowed in layer upon layer of instrumentation as electric guitar, synthesizer, drums and samples join in, then fade away, only to return morphed into a pop song... then, later, to rise amidst sterile blips in "Dead City Centres" Other songs, like "Hallways of Always," "Tomorrow Never Knows," and "Catalept" are built on repeated, dissonant figures which never go anywhere but instead produce an almost unbearable atmosphere of foreboding. If this is a soundtrack for sleep, it is a troubled sleep indeed. "Perdition City" is more quiet than your typical industrial/noise album, but all the more disturbing for that. Everything is on the verge of collapse; this interior city is a place where rage and violence have been replaced by sadness and regret. It is a labyrinth where all the hallways lead nowhere: seductive melodies drift by, then fade back into nothing just when you expect the theme to develop further. Like Lovecraft's R'lyeh, this is a music where the geometry feels all wrong. If H.R. Giger were a composer, he might have written "Perdition City." Few bands have shown Ulver's range, or their willingness to take chances. After receiving wide notice and acclaim for "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," they followed up not with an accessible disc that could have catapaulted them into the ranks of Big League Stardom, but with a challenging work like this. After producing a double CD which garnered comparisons to Richard Wagner, they gave us a work as cerebral and as visionary as Schoenberg... and all I can say is "I can't wait to see what they do next!" Official Ulver Website Jester Records (has Perdition City in stock) |