Heathen Harvest: If a Norwegian band
other than Ulver released an album such as Shadows of the Sun, I
may have gasped agog at such a sharp turn for one of Norway's black
metal originators. Their famous early work, the trilogy Three
Journeyes through the Norwegian Netherworlde, remains classic early
nineties BM, an excellent example of a musical style in the prime
of its originality. But Ulver have constantly written, re-written
and savagely burned their own (and everyone else's) rule book over
the entirety of their career. Leaked to the internet on the 17th of
September, and very well received by both metallers and
non-metallers alike, Shadows of the Sun is described on Ulver's
website as “Our most personal record to date. Low key, dark,
and tragic.”
I get the call from
Kristoffer just past midnight, calling from his home in Oslo.
Rather than talk about touring and other musical mundanities, I
instead quiz him about Shadows of the Sun, and Ulver's steady
evolution from metal to genre-busting electronic ambience. I
couldn't resist asking about Ulver's BM roots, though. Kristoffer
provided some clues to why Ulver is what it is today:
Kristoffer Rygg: By the time we had brought
Three Journeyes to fruition, black metal had turned into something
that didn't interest us very much anymore. Back in the early days,
Norwegian metal musicians employed powerful mythology and symbolism
in their music and their image to emphasize a growing philosophy...
and it had a certain shock value I suppose. But as those boys
continued to evolve, and were maturing, people all over the world
started doing the exact same thing, the perception of black metal
had become worship and emulation. A banal kind of romanticism. Our
change in direction came from a natural desire to take things to
the next level. It was also a way of expressing a more complex
reality, encompassing more than just a simple negation of
Christianity or what have you.
HH: Well and true, Three Journeyes was
followed up with 1998's Themes from William Blake's "The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell", and reflected the bands expanding
interests and artistic vision. It was here that the departure from
a purist BM sound began. It was on Themes that explorations into
cosmological and philosophical themes somewhat broader than classic
BM began.
KR: (Satanism) is not very relevant to me
today. Although I appreciate the regard of the animal in man and
all that, we've become increasingly skeptic. We would like to
believe in something, some kind of truth, but we can't seem to find
it, neither above or below.
HH: Don't think for a second that Ulver
is now some bastion of positivity or a more constructive view of
life, the darkness is still here in Shadows, perhaps more than
ever. The band still express the futility of existence, and the
inevitable conclusion to all life and human aspiration. I mentioned
a recent Metal Edge review, where Phil Freeman wrote “Shadows
Of The Sun makes me want to put on white robes and frolic in
sun-dappled fields, occasionally stopping to roll in the grass. If
medieval Christians had synths, they'd have made music that sounded
like this...”, and asked point blank if we are to
construe a sense of optimism in this release.
KR: NO.
HH: Kristoffer expands on this finalistic
statement...
KR: There may be a little faith, but there
is no hope... This is about looking at the world and nature, its
beauty and cruelty. Nature is pretty fucking depressing, we are all
here to die. And I guess we do what we do to forget the countdown,
and there's a simple kind of beauty in that. The human
resistance.
HH: Shadows is a sombre, melancholic
masterpiece that the trio have wanted to do for a long
time.
KR:
(It has) been important to us to make music that is unheard of...
We feel like strangers in the music industry. We don't associate
with most of what's going on either in the mainstream or the
underground, sad to say. Music has become boring to me, it sucks.
Each year there are like 3 or 4 releases that really impress me.
The rest is just the same old shit in new wrapping.
HH: The alienation is still here in Ulver's
music, a band that have grown beyond any genre, really-that's a
rarity in music and art nowadays-a gem in fact. No single
person steers Ulver, Kristoffer was keen to make the point that
Ulver is ...
KR: ...a synthesis of Tore, Jn and
myself, although I'm the founding father and spokesman.
HH: Ulver's ritual of writing music is to
extrapolate a skeletal structure from 1 or 2 basic ideas, and
to...
KR: ...stretch it out, play on top of it,
and find the end or the beginning, or both ... combine the
elements, Ouroboros style. We're not interested in traditional song
structures, and are a lot more concerned with the subtle movements
of certain sounds or words. We're not relying on rhymes, or linking
sentences together to fit the riffs or shit like that... We'd
rather repeat mantras.
HH: Interestingly, Tore Ylwizaker took a
year off to learn about clasical composition, although Kristoffer
claims “I am too whimsical for that... I would use a year off
very differently. Gardening or something (laughs)”. I also
asked him to pick 2 of what he felt were his favourite tracks on
SOTS and tell me about them, and how they wrote this
record:
KR: “Those 2 tracks are
“Eos” and “Funebre”. These are I feel the
most successful tracks. Closest to what we had in mind initially.
Our ambition was to make a calm record, a sad, dark and gorgeous
record. Neither Eos nor Funebre has any percussion. In fact we
wanted to make the whole album without percussion at first, but it
was too difficult, as rhythm is such a backbone in most
music.
HH: The album is soft, and an
orchestral, ambient sensuality weaves in and out of Rygg's vocals,
creating dark, smooth atmospheres.
So, just what is the essence of Ulver, the essence of a band that
has constantly been an expression of restless experimentation,
regardless of the medium, not just the conservative dollars-fueled
machinery of genre?
KR: To evolve. Not going under. And that
ain’t always easy for us, with our escapist inclinations.
Sometimes it feels as though you're just digging your own grave
with all this...
HH: I ask, aren't you a little tortured,
then?
KR: I certainly am (laughs).
HH:
So what's next? Kristoffer gave me some hints, but I think it's
more exciting to wait and find out. Where will this journey end, if
at all? That's the point, Ulver is a progression of ideas, a search
for meaning, and excursions into what can be done with music, not
the ongoing reproductions of a “style”. Before he hangs
up, Kristoffer dredges up a quote from someone, somewhere, that
neither of us could remember, but that says it all: “All work
is in progress...never finished - only abandoned.”
- romantisme noir, arts sombres, doom et black metal -
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