Jakob Ullmann — Solo I / Solo IV

Now here’s an extremely haunting, at times downright eerie trip into modern classical dark ambience, which really seems to seep deep into both your marrow and psyche. Solo I / Solo IV is just shy of fifty minute work, bringing together two flute/ low string solos and their playback.

The two recordings used date from between the early 90’s and early 2010’s. With Rebecca Lane- playing a quarter-tone flute, and Jon Heilbron on double bass.

Over the forty-eight-minute and forty-four-second piece, the darkly drifting, murkily billowing, and starkly churning tones seem to truly ebb and morph, like slowly drifting and malevolent sonic clouds. At points, there are hints at either haunted melody lines or steadily churning tonal unease. Or we’re seemingly just listening to the slow, endless/ bleak wail of an endless pitch-black abyss.

The piece is both darkly enchanting and very unsettling, with a feeling of amorphous dread & shape shift terror always present.

This CD release appears on Sheffield’s Another Timbre and is quite a departure from what the label normally puts out, which is more in the formal modern classical to modern composition side of things.

If you have a preference for grimly uneasy and bleakly unwieldy dark ambience, then Solo I /Solo IV  will most certainly appeal. Certainly one of the more impactful/ blackly heady dark ambient releases I can recall in recent memory.