Ulver — Perdition City

If you thought that Ulver would release a drum 'n bass or techno album after their Metamorphosis EP then you are wrong. The wolves just can't do the same kind of music twice and so they experiment with electronics, samples, beats and rock on this album Perdition City.

I must say I didn't expect anything less from these guys. Perdition City is presented as a soundtrack to the city. The music really fits the dark and urban atmosphere. With trip-hop beats and some great saxophone solo's Ulver set the mood for the rest of the album in the first song "Lost in Moments".

Nowadays Ulver consists mainly of Christophorus G. Rygg (Trickster G) and Tore Ylwizaker. The rest of the band is mentioned under the 'personnel' section in the CD booklet.

Ulver give us with "Porn Piece Or The Scars Of Cold Kisses" a track which is divided in two parts. The first part is almost ambient and has some minimal beats and effects. The second part features Trickster G's stunning clean vocals. Don't get too attached to his vocal performance since you won't hear him much on the rest of the album. Almost all songs are instrumental and personally I don't see this as a bad thing. The music is not really made for vocals, so without is interesting enough.

The next three tracks "Hallways Of Always", "Tomorrow Never Knows" (Nice James Bond movie-title), and "The Future Sound Of Music" are all instrumentals. All three songs have electronic experiments and are build up in the same manner. Picking a favourite is hard since I like all of them.

In "Dead City Centres" we can hear the sounds from the city. An airplane flying above us and landing 2 kilometres from here. People talking and loading stuff into a car. Then a 50's jazz tune starts and we are turned inside a classic gangster-movie. With "Nowhere/Catastrophe" we end this album with the only 'normal' song, it's a worthy ending and can be legally downloaded in our MP3 section, right here.

Ulver improved a lot after previous full lenght "Themes from William Blake" and can be called one of Europe's highlights in the electronic avant-garde genre. I guess I have to scrap this compliment when Ulver's next full-lenght is out, since they never play the same thing twice.