Ulver Album: “Silencing the Singing”

This is not for everyone. This is for people who love to sit back and listen to very absurd, yet moving, music. If you enjoy Ulver's previous electronic works in Silence Teaches You How To Sing, you should think about purchasing this. If you are familiar with Ulver's work, let's just say this is a combination between Perdition City and Silence Teaches You How To Sing. In any case, if you hate ambience, then I would stray away from this. Although this album is somewhat of a combination between ambience and dark melodies, you must have patience. It can be very rewarding if you have the patience. It does a few beats in the first track, "Darling Didn't We Kill You," like Perdition City did, for those of you who hated STYHTS but liked Perdition City. The following two tracks "Speak Dead Spaker," and "Not Saved" are can be compared to STYHTS moreso.

All in all this is a solid E.P. I enjoyed it, but I can easily see reasons why people would hate it: Too boring, not enough going on, too repetitive, etc. And for that I give it a 4, because Ulver could have done a lot more with it in comparison to their previous two releases. However, it is a worthy electronic collaboration.

If you have never heard Ulver before, I would advise trying to find Perdition City, and then Silence Teaches You How To Sing, before buying this. Ulver is a band of many sounds. While most of their albums are unreased in America, they started out as a black metal band, and are now purely electronic, but they had many changes throughout their career. However, they managed to keep their avid darkness admist all of their works.

This EP is good if you like Ulver moments of very soft, slow atmosphere, with not that much melody. These three songs are very repetitive overall with small subtle changes and sounds. This is what makes atmospheric music. The best example is the 3rd track, where the same short melody is basically repeated over and over for 10 minutes, with different little sounds happening each time. It's much better with headphones. The first 2 tracks are a little more varied but still similar. There are a few really great melodies too such as the end of track 2 there is a very nice soft violin played.

This is not similar to Perdition City at all. There are no groovy rhythms to be found, and nothing remotely upbeat at all. Some of the sounds sound like skipping records, distant grim bells, and just... ambient stuff. If you liked Perdition City... well, I can't tell you if you'd like this or not, that's up to you. I know I love them both. This CD definately is not for everyone, even Ulver fans. I easily see why people would hate it: too boring, too repetitve, not much melody, not much rhythm... but I personally find it to be another Ulver masterpiece.

this particular Ulver recording is best described as an ambient, minimal noise sound scape.

Whilst this is not representative of the vast range of sounds and genres Ulver have embraced during their career, nothing really is! I can imagine this appealing to alot more people than some of their earlier black metal stuff purely because its easier on the ear both in volume and the arrangements arent mindbending like their more experiemental rock electronica weirdness. Having said that it's still fairly strange in a dream like way.

Made sense that later recordings were done as soundtracks to films as this could easily have been a soundtrack to some drug induced coma arty short piece.......

I've been a big fan of Ulver ever since their first CD, Bergtatt, and they have not failed to surprise and stun me with each subsequent release. This one is no exception and ranks with Nattens Madrigal as my faves from this band. Whenever I play it I have to stop what I'm doing and concentrate solely on the sound--I have a hard time calling this music, because it is more like a soundscape. If you like ambient and experimental stuff with little structure, then this is for you.