Ulver 1993-2003: 1st Decade in the Machines

Album review

Over the early 2000s, Ulver has managed to remain prolific while avoiding a true full-length follow-up to the band's 2000 album, Perdition City. There have been three EPs, two movie soundtracks, and an EP compilation. 1st Decade in the Machines, the inevitable remix album, is another one to add to the list. Another band that Ulver head Garm has been involved with, Arcturus, did a remix album a few years ago, too -- Disguised Masters -- and it was pretty entertaining, largely because of all the unexpected stylistic curve balls (trip-hop, jungle, gangsta rap, etc.). The cast of remix contributors on that album was not so well-known, but here, it includes such familiar folks as Viennese laptop all-stars Fennesz and Pita, noise luminaries Merzbow and V/Vm, and other noteworthy names such as Jazzkammer, Third Eye Foundation, and Stars of the Lid. At the same time, the results here are less surprising than on Disguised Masters, partly because of how much more electronic and experimental Ulver's recent work has been than Arcturus' was, but also because the interpretations are less foolhardy and, for better or worse, more "tasteful." Pita and Fennesz turn in predictably subtle, glitched-out variations on Perdition City source material, while Martin Horntveth turns in a reverent bit of string-heavy downtempo melancholy from Silencing the Singing that would have fit right in on the original EP. (For the record, the source material for half of the tracks comes from either Perdition City or the related Silence Teaches You How to Sing/Silencing the Singing EPs.) Things get noisier toward the end, culminating in Merzbow's ten-minute wall-of-sound reinterpretation of the Nattens Madrigal era, which is still fairly restrained given his track record. Another nice surprise is Bogdan Raczynski's "remix" of "The Voice of the Devil" from the William Blake album, although it sounds like less of a remix and more of an original piece of wistful, Aphex Twin-style drum'n'bass with a creepy synth breakdown at the end and just a few scattered samples from the original song. It seems clear that some care was put into this CD so that it doesn't appear carelessly thrown together or incoherent like so many remix albums, which is nice. The album flows well and doesn't contain any outright duds or annoying throwaways. On the other hand, it is still just a remix CD, and it will therefore appeal to a limited audience of electronic-era Ulver obsessives and/or die-hard fans of the remix artists.

© William York /TiVo