v/a "Ulver 1993 - 2003: 1st Decade in the Machines" compilation CD
[Jester]
This insane and lengthy collection of artists celebrates 10 years of mastery from the almighty Ulver in the form of remixes from 14 different acts who have chosen to work with a wide range of material from the Ulver back catalog. Appropriately enough Ulver opens with "Crack Bug", using material from "Nattens Madrigal" off of the 1993 "Vargnatt" demo, though from the crisp electronic tones and moving beats you'd certainly never know it! Alexander Rishaug's eight-minute contribution (compiled from a small set of tracks from "Themes From William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell") consists largely of piercing treble tones and eerie synths mixed in the distance, creating a very thin veil of sound that cuts through your ears like a razor. At times recognizable excerpts from Ulver's aforementioned work become a bit more apparent, but the windy distortion overhead obfuscates things just enough to keep it interesting. Information's reworking of "Silence Teaches You How to Sing" has its moments, but becomes a bit bland and redundant to really hold its own for more than six minutes. The more musical passages, as calm as they are, create a great mood, but it's a bit sparse and quiet, lacking the movement of most of the other pieces. On the other hand, The Third Eye Foundation's "Lyckantropen Remix" (a remix of work from "Lyckantropen Themes", of course) is very minimal and spacious but quite nice, using a lot of throbbing low-end and sporadic musical elements that, while in keeping with the original work, certainly succeed in this tweaked context. Upland's brief retexturing of "Lost in Moments" from "Perdition City" is done in more of a shifting and shuffling cutup style than any of the previous tracks, and, while brief, is honestly somewhat boring in my opinion, as the generally interesting atmosphere is disturbed by the constant stuttering of cutup beats and such. Bogdan Raczynski claims to have used "The Voice of the Devil" from "Themes From William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", but I don't believe it, because the resulting track totally sucks and sounds like a bunch of Casio keyboard crap. There's no feeling at all, the orchestrations sound flimsy, etc. Total garbage. The beats are cool, but the actual synth tones are so unprofessional that this is a disgrace to the name of Ulver. I can't believe this track is even present. Ironically Martin Horntveth's ingenious "Der Alte" follows - working with "Speak Dead Speaker" from "Silencing the Singing" - mixing in some spoken German samples with absolutely stunning use of emotional musical snippets and rock solid beats. Simply stunning. This is by far one of the best tracks on this compilation. I'm blown away. After a slow start Neotropic's "He Said - She Said" (remixing "Not Saved" from "Silencing the Singing") really gets moving with some powerful percussion and distant vocals with some thick, spiraling low-end going on. It's still a bit lengthy (seven minutes), and the really quiet, hollow moments certainly kill the flow, but it has its moments of glory. Next up is a collaboration between A. Wiltzie and Stars of the Lid, who manipulate work from "Perdition City" and the renaissance string remake of "Nattens Madrigal" (and I swear the first few notes of the song sound identical to Christopher Cross' "Sailing", which is very strange and yet somehow fucking awesome). The track is incredibly long (more than 10 minutes), but its consistent approach and ringing ethereal textures blended with smooth musical tones is very hypnotic and billowing so everything flows well. Fennesz reworks various excerpts from "Perdition City", creating blips and bleeps with musical textures in the distance. The track is brief and while not bad, it could be better. The same goes for Pita's "Ulvrmxsw5", also culling sound sources from the "Perdition City" album, as this song is too long and redundant to really work with its watery feedback tones and obscured melody. I like it, but it goes on for too much time. Jazzkammer uses material off of "Bergtatt", but this is by far the harshest composition so far, and barely anything is recognizable. There's a lot of crumbling, percussive distortion sweeping back and forth and compositionally things are quite choppy and chaotic. It's pretty cool, however. V/Vm's contorting of material from "Nattens Madrigal" is equally as abrasive for the most part, though a bit more liner and succinct, with a nice calm break towards the end which adds a good slice of unexpected variety. Merzbow closes things out with a mixture of reanimated sounds from both "Bergtatt" and "Nattens Madrigal". Of course things are insanely harsh and heavy on the high-end/midrange, but there are some cool loops as well as some pulsating undercurrents and faintly recognizable musical elements as well. About halfway through the 10-minute piece the volume level drops immeasurably as things calm down to a faint sizzle with a little bit of an ambient vibe to some degree - especially when the samples of acoustic guitars become evident. After that things become sheer black metal meets harsh noise - blaringly harsh, speaker demolishing distortion with no remorse... Of course the sound quality on every track is exceptional, so I won't go into that as I have no complaints at all. The packaging is minimal but nice and consistent, using all black, white, and shades of red. All of the imagery is drawn on computers using lines and shapes to form various landscapes, and each page of the booklet is laid out very consistently and provides ample information about each track. All in all this is a nice tribute to Ulver. Of course there are some weak moments, but there's really only one completely worthless song here - the rest all have strengths. And if nothing else, I find it interesting to hear how these artist have remixed both Ulver's old and new material to achieve different results. Martin Horntveth steals the fucking show, though. Amazing. (8/10)
Running time - 78:44, Tracks: 14
[Notable tracks: Ulver, Alexander Rishaug, Martin Horntveth, A. Wiltzie vs. Stars of the Lid, V/Vm, Merzbow]
Jester Records - http://www.jester-records.com

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