Moljebka Pvlse — Sadalsuud

Somewhere on Sadalsuud a woman whispers the mantra: "I have found myself, away from this world". Probably somewhere near the star in the Aquarius constellation, "The luckiest of them all" from its originally Arabic meaning, after which this piece is named.

Mathias Josefson, the man behind this longrunning Swedish drone project, surrounded himself with a lot of people on this seventy-minute piece. I must admit this is my acquaintance with Moljebka Pvlse and surfing the net a bit I read that some more experienced listeners were a bit disappointed with this album, which seems to indicate that this is not standard fare. I can't really say much on that, but I can say that I like what's presented here.

There are many instruments used here. From no-input mixer to mbira, from found sound to 'supercollider', whatever that is. You will not get to know what it is either as the lot works more textural and forms a mass in which most isn't really discernable. Over the course of the piece the sounds morph and meld into eachother, with the most earthly sounds being metallic scrapings and the whispers mentioned earlier. The voice, sometimes processed into that of what seems a ghostly apparition, is the recurring element that takes us through the slow metamorphosis of sounds surrounding it.

The drones mostly are dark but not disturbing, more mysterious and intrigueing. About 45 minutes into the piece there is a notable shift in tone though. The scrapes get more nasty and there the dangers that were lurking around the corner all the time manifest. These sounds bring us back to earth a bit, where female moans hallucinate and take us in less pleasant, scarier realms. Almost fifteen minutes later it gets even scarier with the sounds of what seems stressed seagulls and more violent constellation of sounds, in which some nasty frequencies pierce your ears.

Sadalsuud is a varied drone-piece that I quite enjoy listening too. It's dark ambient without being specifically locked the genre that goes by that name, but in the sense that it's dark and it's ambient. Towards the end it's a lot less ambient and these more oppressive passages certainly provide these seventy minutes with some interesting dynamics.