|
The sun is turning, and as the shadows begin to fade we trust you all have at long last received your packages. As most of you know we did not receive the LPs before early November. We would like to apologise once again for the delay and thank you for your patience. Only a few of you have been on our backs about it, and while we understand, we'd like to emphasise that we too have lost a great deal of time and money on this shit. It happens. And life goes on.
As you all know, by now we are filthy rich and expanding the business. Just look at this stunning new artifact:
This beauty is, believe it or not, in stock and will dispatch immediately. Please note that it is from the golden section — NOK 500 / EUR 62 / USD 89 — and only for the ULVER dipsomaniac. A total of 200 have been made; when they are gone, they are gone. Order here.
It is likely to become the most useful band merchandise we will ever make, tragic as we are. Salut.
On the exclusive note, we should also mention that our US partner The End Records is now pushing a ltd. ed. of the Shadows vinyl. One hundred copies in a wooden box with a varnish and a branding, in tandem with a t-shirt and postcards designed by our brother-in-the-hood Stephen O'Malley. Here.
The year of the Rat is on.
JESTER RECORDS, December 22 2007.
Many of you have been waiting for sound, and we are sorry for the silence. We needed to be alone, without the hustle and bustle of the living. We are uncomfortable with the world, the industry and our place. We have been working, sluggishly, well aware we could end up with nothing. Nonetheless we believe we have succeeded in giving our fears some kind of form. SHADOWS OF THE SUN, our 7th full-length album, is finished and will be released October 1st. We feel it is our most personal record to date. Low-key, dark, and tragic. As we are.
ULVER, Oslo, July 13 2007.
"Dark and tragic" might be fitting adjectives for Ulver's 14-year career, but "low-key" is definitely a more recent development. For even though it might be hard to believe it when you listen to the soft-spoken new album, Ulver were once a seminal black metal band. They even have the name (Ulver translates as "Wolves") and a trilogy of folklore-inspired metal to prove it.
But even in a scene that sent shockwaves around the world, Ulver were outsiders. While other black metallers were "slaves to the one with horns", Ulver were inspired by Thomas Kingo, a 17th century composer of psalms.
As the band matured, their influences became even more eclectic. Techno auteurs Autechre rubbed shoulders with visionary mystic William Blake. Ulver have released acoustic folk albums and instrumental techno records, raw metal and industrial soundscapes, and they have composed music for films.
I'd like to say that they are equally comfortable with whatever medium they choose, but that would be a lie. Ulver never seem comfortable—they seem restless, longing for some far-off horizon or hidden world only they can see. This makes every new release from Ulver interesting because you not only have to ask "is it good?" (with Ulver, that's a redundant question) but "what kind of music is it?"
So, what kind of music is this? The boys already told you it's "dark and tragic", but while being weighed down with the world, they have managed to produce their most accessible album to date. This might sound like a paradox, but Ulver thrive on such paradoxes. Their fears have been given a shapely form indeed, capable, perhaps, of bringing a little comfort to some.
Soothing electronics and natural percussion provide the basis for Garm's warm vocals, singing songs of loss and disillusion. While the lyrics provide little hope, the music carries a note of quiet faith. It sees Ulver abandon many of their grand concepts, to focus on music and human emotion. Contributions by world-renowned thereminist Pamelia Kurstin help make SHADOWS OF THE SUN a piece of rare beauty.
You want comparisons? SHADOWS OF THE SUN sees Ulver borrow some pigments from David Sylvian's palette, using it to transport their own visions onto the canvas. Incidentally, Austrian audio abstracter Christian Fennesz, an associate of Sylvian, also help make this album what it is.
Other comparions could be made. The band are avowed fans of Coil. Nick Cave, maybe. But such comparisons only cheapen, because Ulver really don't sound like anybody you already know. They are the perfect strangers.
I'd call them "lone wolves", but I've promised the band to lay off the wolf jokes.
DIDRIK SØDERLIND, Fall 2007.
We have received a note from Kenneth Anger claiming that we are libeling him.
The IT IS NOT SOUND video is of course not directed by Kenneth Anger. The set design is of course not by Albrecht Dürer. Being who we are, we assume that people read between the lines.
Remember Gloria Swanson? Really Ken, who's the cranky old bitch?
I have a problem with censorship [...]. They don't seem to want to take too many risks with living people. Or else I've got to tone down or rewrite some things. – Kenneth Anger
Please re-read our press release. And between us: Thank you for your autograph.
ULVER, Cairo, November 2005.
Interviews for BLOOD INSIDE, from Atomic Threat, Zero Tolerance, Terrorizer, Musique Machine and Modern Fix, here.
Animals! Werewolves, once among the most influential of the black metal family, now stray, strange birds.
Perdition City from year 2000 was ULVER's last proper album. KERRANG! ranking it top ten that year and writing: "This ain't rock'n roll. This is evolution on such a grand scale that most bands wouldn't even be able to wrap their tiny little minds around it."
A series of EPs and a couple of soundtracks followed. In 2003 ULVER marked their ten years of metamorphosis with a remix CD featuring household subversives such as Fennesz, Stars of the Lid, Third Eye Foundation and Merzbow. ULVER has been nominated to the Norwegian Grammy Awards, Spellemannsprisen, twice, in different categories. They have continued scoring motion pictures, most notably a joint soundtrack with singer/songwriter Tom McRae for the multiple award-winning Uno last year. Only Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter got more visits.
Their last release was the EP A Quick Fix of Melancholy. The band described the thing as chamber music for the fucked up. Some dude responded: "Ulver seems to have tapped into a musical vein that not many are aware of. This reminds me of The Nutcracker Suite type of holiday cartoons being thrust through the imagination of a mental patient at the local institution of your choice."
Nuts or not: ULVER is a tough crack.
"You could file it under spoken word, electronica, metal, pop, or art songs, and be right every time. It's Ulverific!" (The Village Voice)
Now BLOOD INSIDE. It's really very good. They did it themselves, and got away with a little help from legendary producer/mixer/artist Ronan Chris Murphy: King Crimson's preferred audio pilot and collaborator with ladies and gents such as Steve Morse (Deep Purple), Terry Bozzio (Frank Zappa), Tony Levin (Peter Gabriel, John Lennon, Pink Floyd), Joan LaBarbara (Philip Glass Ensemble, Steve Reich), as well as younger blood from Tool to Ministry.
ULVER is 33 years and counting backwards. They have the whole future behind them.
Just think about it. Would you have more kids with laptops unprepared for droning metal storms and featuring one of them Sonic Youth's covered by a perfectly bland art design out every day at Hippsville Records? Then go fuck yourself.
It is hard. We know. Very advanced. Very narcissistic. A bona fide blow in the head. Lights out.
ULVER is in the hospital. They are really sick. Operating in the red, making wrong calls, damn pranksters. And they have a lot of instruments. Be patient.
Video: starring His Holiness John Paul II aka Trickster G. with spastic paralysis. Set design by Gustave Doré and Albrecht Dürer with a Kenneth Anger impersonator behind the camera.
We give you ULVER's BLOOD INSIDE. Certified and sanctified. For gods and dogs alike. The first 2000 in red velvet and numbered inside.
Due to reorganisation the boys are now stationed in a labyrinth outside Cairo. They are shifting shapes to come.
JESTER RECORDS, June 2005.
October and we're done with the film business for now. UNO has become a major success in Norway, with over 200 000 visitors the first month, and it just won a prize at the EuropaCinema festival in Italy. A commercial soundtrack has been released by Bonnier Amigo Music Norway. Forget it; we will push our own via Jester in due time.
We just have to release the Blood inside. It is running cold and the brain is receiving it and interpreting and transmitting again and again and again. It is making us sick. A baroque thing, beyond all good taste.
FOR THE RECORD
NO ONE WILL UNDERSTAND
WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT
THE DEAD NAME
BACKWARDS
AMEN
IT JUST HAPPENED
A LONG TIME AGO
33 YEARS
AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN
WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT
IT IS A PROMISE
OF A LIFETIME
NEVER RECORDED
In between: A collaboration with our long time friend Stephen O'Malley and his SUNN O))) has taken place. The result is a 15 min. epic commisioned for a Swedish radio broadcast, and it will be on SUNN O)))'s bastard White 4LP Box scheduled for spring 2005.
We've also done a down-tempo Strange ways for the upcoming KISS tribute album Gods of Thunder. Released next year by VME in cooperation with the Norwegian Kiss Army, featuring among others TURBONEGRO and GLUECIFER. KISS is king.
Roll baroque.
ULVER, October 20 2004.
Los Angeles was strange. Blood Inside, gold outside. Friggin' Frank Zappa's guitar player, Mike Keneally, ended up going mad over our record. We are proud to probably not use much of it. We also had Tom McRae with band over for a day of improvising for the film UNO. Some sort of moon unit we were in Ronan's own Woodstock, with pianos, acoustic guitars, cello, violin and of course Rhodes. We have four hours on record which will be edited down for an "unplugged" disc accompanying the final film score. Still in the making. UNO opens the
Haugesund International Film Festival in August.
The score for Mona J. Hoel's film entitled Salto, salmiakk og kaffe is done. Featuring Sámi siren Mari Boine and percussionist Marilyn Mazur, who's played with Miles Davis for crying out loud. We make a CD for you.
Oh beautiful harvest.
ULVER, June 14 2004.
Encore: Spellemannsprisen, the Norwegian Grammy Awards, 2003. We are electronica. Last year we were open. Next year we will be gone. Unless all labels collapse. Live on Norwegian TV2 February 28 2004. We are away. California.
Ronan Chris Murphy will mix our new album in his Veneto West studio L.A. He is the man for work with King Crimson among others. Blood Inside is the title. This fall. All falls.
Back march we start working on two feature film assignments. No rest. Wicked we. Mona Hoel and Freedom From Fear is one. The other is Aksel Hennie's UNO, with the melancholic British singer/songwriter Tom McRae on a joint score. Other projects in negotiation.
Impending.
We hail the Lion.
ULVER, January 28 2004.
A Quick Fix of Melancholy ep and the Svidd Neger soundtrack are now out. We are working dedicatedly on our next full-length release, with the Heart album as working title, replacing the utopian enterprise. Oblivion to you all.
ULVER, September 17 2003.
Happy birthday. Change hands. A head.
Admitted and circumcised. By friends. Thanks.
Haywire lycanthropy. Wolves evolve.
ULVER 1993-2003: 1st decade in the machines is complete. Remixes by ULVER, Alexander Rishaug, Information, Third Eye Foundation, Upland, Bogdan Raczynski, Martin Horntveth, Neotropic, Stars of the Lid, Fennesz, Pita, Jazzkammer, V/Vm, Merzbow. Some previously announced artists/mixes have been left out; there's a play time and a time to deliver. Out March.
A Quick Fix of Melancholy ep: 3 tracks over 30 min. reflecting the title. G. on vocals on VOWELS by the Canadian author Christian Bök. Out April.
Svidd Neger is slightly delayed. Premiere late May / early June.
ULVER, February 12 2003.
Lyckantropen Themes has been nominated to Spellemannsprisen 2002, the Norwegian Grammy Awards, genre Open Class. Other nominees are Mari Boine, Jaga Jazzist, Nils Petter Molvær and Sidsel Endresen with Bugge Wesseltoft. The soundtrack will unlikely bring us the award in this company, none the less we appreciate the nomination. The show is broadcasted on Norwegian national television February 22.
ULVER, January 7 2003.
The score for Svidd neger is almost done and will be released on Jester in parallel with the film premiere March 2003. The music is more elaborate than the abstract minimalism of Lyckantropen.
The string remake of Nattens Madrigal is of course delayed - no further friggin' comment. The original havoc is now re-released on vinyl by the Dutch Displeased Records; on CD by the Italian Avant Garde Records.
From the fashion wing: A merchandise deal with UK's Plastichead is in place. Perdition City and Lyckantropen T-shirts are available now.
JESTER RECORDS, December 12 2002.
ULVER has been employed for the soundtrack to the upcoming Norwegian anti-Dogma outburst Svidd neger, a 1.5 million USD budgeter hitting the big screen spring 2003. The scenery is absurd Norway in splendour; the music will be all pomp and circumstance. More information at www.sviddneger.no.
Some horror film enthusiasts have also approached us for our competence as true servants of darkness and evil. However we don't sell our souls cheap these days. We'll see, it all comes down to hard cash.
ULVER, July 20 2002.
New releases scheduled for 2003 to mark ULVER's ten years in metabusiness:
1. A collection of transformations from the ULVER catalogue by artists such as Christian Fennesz, Jazzkammer, Kevin Drumm, Kid 606, Martin Horntveth (Jaga Jazzist), Merzbow, Neotropic, Pita, Bogdan Raczynski, Alexander Rishaug, Stars of the Lid, Third Eye Foundation, Upland, V/Vm and others. Both classic and current ULVER material will be remade through contemporary noise, glitch and electronic frolic.
2. A new album, Utopian Enterprises, with texts and images in one grand package (the size depending on our sponsors). A return to vocals and violations with maximum manipulation and understanding of audio technology, beauty and - predicting the misunderstanding - pretence. We've killed too many darlings to please the police. When hurt, we reflect, the failure. Fuck you.
From the visual wing: ULVER is currently employed for a soundtrack to the Swedish film Lyckantropen, directed by Steve Ericsson (trailer download at www.lyckantropen.com). The beast in man, in different neighbourhoods, different forms, but all the same: Awakening.
From the noise wing: An ULVER remix off Merzbow's Frog album will be released through Misantrophic Agenda (www.holyterror.com/misanthropicagenda). A terrorist remix has also been done for the new album from Zyklon, old metal buddies of G., out on Candlelight Records this fall.
From the silence wing: The two post-Perdition city improv-glitch-EPs (limited and sold out) are re-released as one disc on the American indie label Black Apple Records (www.blackapplerecords.com) under the title Teachings in silence.
The ambient string remake of Nattens Madrigal is a drag. We promise to complete it within summer and release it through Jester (www.jester-records.com) this fall. If Century Media fancies our liquidation, contact the ULVER finance department at bestseller@blake.com.
ULVER, from the March 15 2002 press release.
Everything falls. World history is an endless process of failure and falling, forced forward by opposed powers. In this twilight ULVER hovers, somewhere between Beast and Man, noise and silence, the golden summits and the dead centre.
Their first fall was into the satanic metal scene emerging in Norway in the beginning of the 1990's. Their songs were manifestations of rebellious romanticism, combining elements from Old Norse folk music with the primal brutality of black metal. The first three albums form a trilogy exploring the sinister aspects of Norwegian folklore. The beastliness begins with Bergtatt (1994), is balanced with the all acoustic, neo-folk album Kveldssanger (1995), before returning with even more impact on Nattens Madrigal (1996), where the pure anger and anguish is a consequence of the quintessential lycanthropic lyrics.
ULVER's uncompromising and enigmatic attitude made the band one of the most influential of the Norwegian subculture. Nonetheless they recognized that these early endeavors were stepping stones rather than conclusions - a thought that most bands of the scene did not care or dare to think. ULVER has always been in radical opposition to all forms of restriction and habit. "I think we quite early discarded all convulsive attempts at being dark and evil in any common sense of these words", states G., "When it comes to darkness, I find it much more fascinating when applied subtly."
ULVER fell further with their fourth album, Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1998, trick001). This double CD is an epic recital of the book where Blake evokes the power of imagination against the restrictions of the human ratio. Musically it explores a wide range of sound disciplines, including ambient soundscapes, industrial, cinematic jazz and rock/metal hybrids.
While some genre purists were taken aback by the violation of their boundaries, a new audience now discovered the band. ULVER started interacting with a broader range of people on the cultural fringe: modern heretical philosophers and musicians, writers on conspiracy, chaos magicians and the likes. In Norway the band has been involved in books, movies and multimedia projects, enjoying rising acclaim from a downright diverse lot. ULVER posters started appearing in everything from dumb smash box movies such as Senseless to the TV series Sopranos. The controversial director of the motion pictures Kids and Gummo, Harmony Korine, recently commented, alluding to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: "There's a real lineage from a composer like Wagner to a band like ULVER". This confirms ULVER's outstanding status - a status that has resulted in proposals from world-class engineers for production of future albums, remix requests from other musicians, as well as invitations to multimedia projects.
Then followed the aptly titled Metamorphosis ep (1999, trick006), a dark cultivation of the electronic experiments introduced on the Blake album. The EP served as a foretaste of what awaits us now: Perdition City. ULVER's fifth full-length album shows the band retreating even further, into observations of beauty and decay and the loss of innocence. However disillusioned the band may appear today, there are still these keen visions, still these withdrawn and picturesque atmospheres. Subtitled Music to an interior film, this is indeed music to evoke images in the mind.
ULVER belongs to a rare breed of musicians who fall with strict consequence on album after album. And Perdition City is a stunning manifestation of all this within a framework of artistic perfection and mature aestheticism. It is also an album that will convince those in search for modern and sophisticated music without hearing the wings of angels and demons beating beneath.
TIMO KÖLLING, Perdition City Press Release 2000. |
|
