A boat ride to the venue, from Neera café, adjacent to Eat Street on Necklace Road, will take you on a peaceful journey across the lake, surrounded by the serene beauty of nature.
Updated On – 03:35 PM, Fri – 20 January 23
Hyderabad: A Jaltarang performance by Milind Tulankar, accompanied on the tabla by Ganesh Tanwade, is being organised as part of the Indian classical music series ‘Nirvanaa’ on Sunday, January 22, at 6.30 am at the Buddha Statue, Hussain Sagar Lake.
The event, organised by Tatvaa Arts, in association with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Zonal Office (South), Bengaluru, Ministry of External Affairs, powered by NMDC Limited, offers music lovers in Hyderabad the chance to experience the beauty of Indian classical music in a serene and peaceful environment.
A boat ride to the venue, from Neera café, adjacent to Eat Street on Necklace Road, will take you on a peaceful journey across the lake, surrounded by the serene beauty of nature. The boat ride itself is an experience to be savoured, and it’s an unforgettable way to begin your musical journey.
Tatvaa Arts looks forward to welcoming music connoisseurs to the concert and sharing this unique musical and natural experience with them. The ‘Nirvana’ Indian classical music series is the perfect way to start your day, with the morning ragas of India setting the tone for the day ahead.
Additionally, morning ragas are believed to evoke a sense of calm and serenity, making them the perfect music for the early morning hours. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to experience the beauty of Indian classical music in a truly special and unique setting.
Tickets for the concert are available on bookmyshow.com , while the boat charges are Rs 100 per head.
The lineup for the GoldenSky Country Music Festival, one of Sacramento’s newest — and already buzzing — music festivals, is out and organizers are already energized for the October event.
The event debuted last October, bringing roughly 50,000 people to Discovery Park for two days of music, organizers said.
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“We’re looking forward to building on the experiences that we introduced last year,” said Chamie McCurry of Danny Wimmer Presents.
The festival’s organizers are behind the longstanding Aftershock festival. After a decade of success, they introduced GoldenSky in 2022, which saw a crowd similar to what Aftershock brings out.
“We’re really seeing that Sacramento is becoming a destination festival market,” McCurry said.
The 2023 lineup includes Eric Church, Maren Morris, and Jon Pardi of Dixon. Passes are on sale and roughly 75% of VIP passes had already been purchased as of Thursday, McCurry said.
“There’s a lot to do once you’re inside the gates that are unlike any concert experience you’ll be going to in Sacramento,” McCurry said.
For Mike Testa of Visit Sacramento, the return of GoldenSky is a win for the city. He said event organizers underestimated how well the festival would be received in its inaugural year.
Testa said the event brought in more revenue, too, estimating about $12 million in economic impact for the 2022 festival.
“Music festivals, sporting events, big events in general, they matter whether you attend them or not,” Testa said. “The tourism isn’t about the tourists: It’s about bringing in outside dollars to benefit the people that live here and we certainly see that through this festival.”
GoldenSky will take place Oct. 14 and 15 at Discovery Park.
Weekend and Single Day General Admission and VIP passes for GoldenSky Country Music Festival are on sale now. You can find tickets here.
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George Guthrie Taylor, one of Scotland’s most influential and inspiring musical educators, has died at the age of 88.
Born in 1934, George grew up in Dumfries and, although baptised into the Church of Scotland, sang as a boy chorister in the choir of Saint John’s Episcopal church, discovering an interest in choral music and composition. He studied violin, piano and composition at Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music, graduating DRSAM, and took further qualifications from Durham university (BMus) and the Royal College of Music in London (ARCM).
After working as a music teacher in Glasgow schools in the late 1950s and 1960s he joined the staff of the RSAMD in 1969 as a lecturer in harmony, counterpoint and composition teaching in the Senior and Junior departments. He also taught at the Music School of Douglas Academy (Milngavie) as its first harmony teacher while working for the SQA as an examiner, setting the Higher Music syllabus, and was influential in designing the courses which would lead to the RSAMD attaining degree-awarding status in 1994, the first Conservatoire in the UK to do so.
He was instrumental in establishing extramural classes in Music at Glasgow University, attracting many adult learners, and from 1982-2007 was organist at Carstairs Church. In 2000 he was made a Fellow of the RSAMD and retired from there in 2001.
Retirement did not agree with George, however, so when he was approached by the Aberdeen City Music School in 2002 to head up its academic music department he accepted the invitation and travelled between Lanark (his home from 1967 until his death) and Aberdeen to teach there for three days a week, finally retiring in 2020.
A committed Christian, George converted to Catholicism in 2007 and regularly served as organist at Saint Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in Lanark, playing for the visit of Cardinal Keith O’Brien.
His influence on church music throughout the UK includes former students occupying lectureships at Glasgow University, London’s Royal Academy, the Royal College of Music, King’s College London, Cambridge University and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, formerly the RSAMD. He was fluent in French, Italian and German, and was also highly proficient in mathematics and an accomplished botanist.
Although remembered as an extraordinary teacher – academy students queued up to be taught by him – George was also an incredible musician; a versatile keyboard player, both as pianist and organist, a skilled choir director, composer, arranger, an experienced orchestrator and, in his earlier years, a sought-after chamber musician regularly appearing alongside Joan and Hester Dickson as guest violinist.
George pursued academic research into the music of Swiss composer Willy Burkhard and had assimilated the music of Luca Marenzio and Claudio Merulo long before professional Early Music groups began recording their music. He would surely have become one of the world’s great composers had his self-effacing nature not prohibited any such ambition, and he never sought academic or administrative promotion since these would only distract from his intellectual pursuits and vocation as an educator. George was most himself when he was teaching Harmony & Counterpoint, however, and in this area he was quite simply a phenomenon. He had absorbed the music of every composer imaginable and music would drip from his pen onto manuscript paper with ease. As a virtuoso teacher he gave others the ability to learn for themselves so that when he was pressed to write the definitive book on Harmony & Counterpoint he would reply that his students were his book. “It’s not the problem itself that’s difficult” he would say, “it’s how you think of it that makes it difficult. Change your approach and the problem disappears.” And with this philosophy he inspired generations of students, so that those who struggled to get past the first chapter of any music theory book suddenly found that they were composing freely.
He felt that if students had spent an hour with a teacher, they should leave the room being able to do something that they couldn’t do when they entered it, and while he lamented the later watering down of music curricula he was never snobbish about what might enthuse students musically. He was also extremely skilled at recognising what kind of musician a young person might become, whether they would be a performer or whether their gifts lay elsewhere, and this made George a powerful asset to Douglas Academy, Aberdeen City Music School and the Junior Department of the RSAMD; hundreds of musicians and teachers credit him with helping them recognise their calling.
But while he could improvise a fugue, a chorale prelude, a Song Without Words with astonishing fluency, he tookmore pride in the fact that students who struggled would be sent to him as the person most likely to be able to help. He was also years ahead of the profession in terms of recognising learning disabilities and developed methods to help students effectively.
Generations of students will remember him as the most outstanding teacher of music they would ever meet and one of the finest musicians Scotland has produced, but George was also a man of genuine humility, sincere faith, unshakeable loyalty, loveable humour and a sorely missed friend.
He is survived by his sister Mary, his nieces Enid and Helen, and his legacy continues through the work of the thousands of students he taught throughout a stellar career which extended over 60 years.
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New Paltz resident Cheryl B. Engelhardt was 2 1/2 years old when her parents took her to her first live music event, a piano concert. The toddler sat mesmerized and wanting to hear the music without distraction, put a chubby finger to her lips and shushed the people around her.
A few decades later, she’s Grammy-nominated for Best New Age, Ambient or Chant Album.
Engelhardt’s love of music continued through high school and into college at Cornell University, where she majored in marine biology. She took music classes as electives, but her advisor pointed out she almost had enough credits for a double major. Engelhardt only took one marine biology job after graduation, and since then her career has been all about music.
Before she became a New Age artist, Engelhardt was more of a singer-songwriter, a “Sarah Bareilles meets Alanis Morissette meets Cheryl Crow” type, in her description. She put out four albums, toured, played house concerts and ski resorts and worked on film scores.
But then she got a composer residency in Greece, which spurred a shift to experimental piano music. It was there that she made “Luminary,” her first New Age album.
Engelhardt wanted to work out some anxiety, grief and other emotional residue from her father’s death a few years prior, and the intention was to make music, not an album per se. But by the time the residency ended, she had 10 tracks that worked together.
“The first tracks are a little busy and dark, and then they slowly unravel, slow down, and turn more positive,” Engelhardt said. “Each track latched onto some sort of emotion — anxiety, sadness — and I realized that’s what I needed to help me with my meditation and processing.”
Typical meditation music was either too simplistic or too melodic for Engelhardt.
“I found I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing during meditation, which was look at what I needed to look at in myself,” Engelhardt said. “So I thought, what if I could have the music help you latch on, help with focus, keep you present?”
It worked. “Luminary” was released and shot to the top of the New Age charts on Amazon and iTunes, doing much better than any of her pop albums. Engelhardt said she laughed and asked herself, “Am I a New Age artist now?”
The answer was yes, and Engelhardt now confidently describes herself as an “edgy Enya.” Engelhardt quickly followed up with another New Age album, “A Seeker’s Slumber,” which also did well, before she arrived at the place where she composed and recorded “The Passenger.”
While “The Passenger” was born from a deeply emotional place, it wasn’t recorded in any one physical place. The music was written by Engelhardt in a roomette on Amtrak as she traveled between New York and Los Angeles. She’d planned to attend the 2022 Grammys with her best friend and collaborator, Kevin Archambault, but then the Grammys were postponed and Archambault died from cancer. Engelhardt decided to go anyway, not for the award ceremony and not with her friend, but maybe to compose an album. She thought that nobody had ever made a record on a cross-country train trip, and she wondered if she could.
By the time Engelhardt reached Los Angeles, she’d cried over the loss of Archambault while also being moved to tears by the natural beauty — the full moon, hundreds of elk, the frozen Colorado River — that she witnessed on the journey. Engelhardt traveled with a mini keyboard, laptop and headphones — essentially a mobile recording studio — and after crossing the country, she’d recorded 12 tracks, nine of which would become “The Passenger.”
On the return trip, Engelhardt worked on edits and reached out to collaborators such as Lili Haydn, Sangeeta Kaur, and Danaë Xanthe Vlasse. A few men perform with the Dallas String Quartet, but other than that “The Passenger” is completely composed, produced, mixed and mastered by women. It was released in April 2022, and quickly became a New Age bestseller on Amazon and iTunes.
Meditation brought Engelhardt to compose New Age music, and it gives her story a perfect arc that she was at a meditation retreat when she found out she’d been nominated for a Grammy.
“A nomination for this project gives extra meaning to a hard time, and highlights again that music does in fact heal when used as a tool for processing,” Engelhardt said.
In 34 years, only two solo female artists have ever won a Grammy in the New Age category. But that didn’t stop Engelhardt from visualizing a win during a two-hour meditation after she heard the news.
You can listen to “The Passenger” on various streaming platforms and follow Engelhardt’s news on her website, Facebook and Instagram.
Almost 20 years ago, the members of RBD came together for the first time on the Mexican telenovela Rebelde. Quickly, the series — which followed teens who formed a band at a fictional private school — became a household staple, propelling the group’s members to make the show’s band a real thing. RBD eventually became a sensation and a pop culture staple for many Latinos.
On Thursday, 15 years after RBD went on hiatus, the beloved Mexican pop group announced that they’re officially heading on a stadium and arena tour this fall, energizing longtime fans and new generations who discovered RBD after the band’s music became available on streaming services during the pandemic.
“The music of RBD was living in the hearts of our fans,” Dulce María tells Rolling Stone. “But in 2020, when our music was put on streaming services, there was a boom. When RBD was what it was, there were no streaming services, just CDs. Now that younger people can listen, the nostalgia was reborn.”
RBD’s five returning members — Dulce Maria, Anahi, Maite Perroni, Christian Chavez, and Christopher von Uckermann — caught up with Rolling Stone ahead of their tour announcement and shared why now is the perfect time for a reunion. “Our group is more than friends. They’re family,” Von Uckermann says. “We want to end this journey in such a loving way.” (RBD was originally made up of six members, but Alfonso Herrera, known more recently from Ozark, is not returning.)
“Regardless of how different each of us is, something bigger brings us together. It’s the love, the sisterhood,” Dulce adds. “We want to bring back this love that people have given us: We’re not stopping the dreams, and it’s something beautiful.”
RBD first teased that a reunion was on its way last month when the five returning members — minus Herrera — made their profile pictures blank. They each posted a video that spliced clips from Rebelde with an in-person reunion, captioning it “Soy Rebelde,” the band’s tagline.
Maria, known for her iconic blood-red hair, got to see how fans craved early aughts nostalgia over the past year, as she joined the “2000’s Pop Tour,” a multi-artist tour in Mexico, headlined by Paty Cantú and Belinda. “People go crazy over that era,” she says.
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Anahí, known for her role as Mia Colucci, and who joined Karol G during her stop in Mexico City to perform “Sálvame,” says the reunion is aimed at giving back to the group’s longest-lasting fans. “It’s been beautiful to know that people keep the group in their hearts,” she tells Rolling Stone. “To live this moment with my fellow members is pure magic.”
For Chavez, reuniting with RBD has an even more personal meaning. He’ll be able to take the stage fully embracing his identity as a queer person after feeling like he had to hide it during RBD’s success. Now, Chavez is ready to be “completely myself” on this new tour.
“I’m excited to shine as a genderfluid, queer person onstage,” he says. “While in RBD, I was fighting to be myself, to love how I wanted to love. I came out and sacrificed, perhaps, a better professional life.”
In 2007, as RBD was on a North American tour, Chavez was forced to come out after he was blackmailed by a tabloid that had acquired photos of his wedding ceremony to ex-husband B.J. Murphy. He had previously denied identifying as gay for fear of what his identity might do to his career. “I love to see how people don’t have to go through what I did,” he says of how much acceptance for the gay community has changed over the years. “I love seeing how new generations don’t care what other people think.”
Earlier this month, Perroni, who continued her telenovela career after Rebelde, announced that she was pregnant and would be welcoming her first child. Following her announcement, speculation about whether she’d have to pull out of an RBD reunion filled tabloid headlines in Mexico.
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But Perroni is set and committed to this project “al100%.” “I would have never signed up for this if I couldn’t be there,” she says. And though welcoming her baby will be the “most important moment of my life,” she has her mind set on touring with the group. “I’m about to share a stage with my brothers and sisters. We’re back together and we’re filled with energy as we go into this,” she says. “I’m ready to live this euphoria.”
As for Von Uckermann, who focused on his acting career after RBD disbanded, he says he “never imagined” that returning to the group being part of his journey, but that now he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“There was a lot of learning and we represented something so large,” he says. “Doing this is our way of ending this cycle and thanking our fans, who after years, continue to listen to the music. We want to allow new generations, who never went to the shows, to see us perform.”
Soy Rebelde Tour Dates
Aug. 25 – El Paso, TX @ Sun Bowl Stadium Aug. 27 – Houston, TX @ Minute Maid Park Sept. 1 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden Sept. 2 – Fairfax, NY @ Eaglebank Arena Sept. 3 – Greensboro, NC @ Greensboro Coliseum Complex Sept. 8 – Chicago, IL @ Guaranteed Rate Field Sept. 10 – Denver, CO @ Ball Arena Sept. 13 – Phoenix, AZ @ Desert Diamond Arena Sept. 14 – Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena Sept. 22 – Miami, FL @ Miami-Dade Arena Sept. 23 – Orlando, FL @ Amway Center Sept. 24 – Atlanta, GA @ Lakewood Amphitheatre Sept. 27 – Edinburg, TX @ Bert Ogden Arena Sept. 30 – Arlington, TX @ Globe Life Field
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Oct. 1 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center Oct. 6 – San Jose, CA @ SAP Center Oct. 7 – Sacramento, CA @ Golden 1 Center Oct. 8 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center Oct. 13 – San Diego, CA @ Viejas Arena Oct. 15 – Fresno, CA @ Save Mart Center Oct. 19 – Los Angeles, CA @ Banc of California Stadium
Nov. 17 – São Paulo, BRA @ Allianz Parque Nov. 19 – Rio de Janeiro, BRA @ Estadio Nilton Santos Engenhão Nov. 24 – Monterrey, MEX @ Estadio Mobil Super Nov. 26 – Guadalajara, MEX @ Estadio 3 de Marzo Dec. 1 – Mexico City, MEX @ Foro Sol
The next music i’m featuring in my series exploring interesting free music is another soundtrack, again very short, this time from television. It’s something of an oddity, partly because it was never a ‘release’ in the usual sense of the word (and isn’t really available any longer), partly because it’s a blatant exercise in pastiche. Created by Peter Serafinowicz and Robert Popper, Look Around You is a comedy series, the first season of which (broadcast in 2002) was designed to parody the series of educational films shown to English schoolchildren during the 1980s. The season featured eight episodes (plus a double-length pilot) each focusing on one aspect of the natural – and, in one instance, supernatural – world: calcium, maths, water, germs, ghosts, sulphur, music, iron and the brain. The programmes purported to explore these themes scientifically through a variety of explanations and experiments, all of which were absolute, hilariously absurd nonsense. Every aspect of the show’s presentation was designed to replicate the style of those original films as faithfully as possible, and this extended to the music, created by Popper and Serafinowicz, who were cryptically credited as ‘Gelg’.
from the end credits of Look Around You, Season 1 Episode 2 ‘Water’
The series was broadcast by the BBC, and in keeping with their educational remit they hosted a parody Look Around You website, where viewers could in theory interact with the show’s creators in addition to extending and testing further the hapless “knowledge” gleaned from the programme. The website included a media section where it was possible to download eight excerpts from the soundtrack – simply titled ‘Piece One’ to ‘Piece Eight’ – comprising around 11½ minutes of music. Though each very short, they’re a lovely testament to the care taken by ‘Gelg’ to recreate and evoke an earlier time.
The majority of them revel in analogue synth patterns. Some are quick and lively, filled with dancing arpeggios, as in pieces one, three and five; three was used during the opening and closing narration of each show. Others are more slow and brooding, depending on the nature of the on-screen activities. These include piece two, which accompanied an experiment to summon a ghost, piece eight, which consists of edgy floating music with almost no low registers sounds at all, used as the underscore for an experiment where lab technicians collaborate with ghosts. and piece six, where gentle plinking chords accompany a demonstration of the startling effects resulting from drinking ‘sulphagne’ (sulphur mixed with champagne). The other two excerpts are acoustic: piece four featuring a simple burst of reggae (one of the announced but non-existent “next week” episodes would have explored reggae), piece seven a noodling guitar backdrop to a demented maths problem.
These eight tracks are admittedly a bit of a niche curiosity, but they’re a nice extension of the superb authenticity shown throughout the show. The Look Around You website has been archived since 2006 and many of the links no longer function, but the original eight sound files can be downloaded below. A word of warning: they were released as very low-resolution (128Kbps) MP3s, and some of them feature a surprising amount of audible hiss or dither effects; it’s possible the hiss has been deliberately exacerbated so as to play up the music’s supposed analogue origins, though the quantity of dither squelch is surprising, perhaps suggesting very rudimentary compression (neither the hiss nor the dither are audible when the music features in the actual programmes). Nonetheless, this all feeds into the show’s uniquely askew nostalgic soundworld.
After her 2020 Spanish language album Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios) ∞ notched both critical and commercial acclaim, Kali Uchis shares her first new offering of 2023 in “I Wish You Roses.” Single Video
“This song is about being able to release people with love,” Uchis says about the track. “It could be a friend, a lover, or someone else, but the point is to celebrate releasing people from your life without being resentful or bitter.”
The track was also released alongside a video, directed by Cho Gi-Seok in Korea.
Kali Uchis Returns With “I Wish You Roses” Single was last modified: January 19th, 2023 by Meka
Even though he started off as a vocalist, it was during his college days in Pune that Indore- born musician Parag Chhabra started looking for opportu- nities beyond just vocal expertise. Trained in hindustani classical music, he soon joined AR Rahman’s KM Music Conservatory in Chennai, where he was eventually discovered by the legendary composer. His shift to Mumbai in 2018 got him his first break as a composer in the film Waah Zindagi starring Naveen Kasturia, Sanjay Mishra and Vijay Raaz. Currently, he is actively working as an independent music director with films like Good Luck Jerry, Jai Mummy Di, An Action Hero and the National award- winning film Turtle. We speak to him to learn more about his musical style ahead of the digital debut of An Action Hero.
How would you describe your music philosophy?
This journey requires me to seek out knowledge; hence I can’t remain fixated on ideas. I truly believe music should soothe and heal people, especially in today’s times. I would say healing people through music is one of my major call- ings.
How would you describe your musical stint in An Action Hero?
This is my second film with Anand L Rai as my first film with him was Good Luck Jerry. For An Action Hero, the theme was the first thing we cracked and it did quite well after the track’s ini- tial release. It was then that we thought of turning it into a full-fledged song. The song mainly focused on a rap battle so as to bring out the concept of conflict
through it, with the theme music inter- playing in between. There’s another song called Ghere that explores the hip hop space with lots of melody in it. It has been sung by Vivek Hariharan and that rap part was executed by D’Evil of Gully Gang Cypher fame. The film is extremely urban with strong doses of dark humour in it, so, we tried to keep the music as urban as we could, bringing in western elements, as well. We have used uncommon instruments like the dotara from Bengal and the pipa from China. There are a total of fourteen instrumental layerings used in the songs.
Since forming in 1993, Ulver have built a reputation for constant, drastic reinvention. Although they first rose to prominence as a black metal band, the Norwegian trio (whose name translates to “wolves”) have spent the past two decades exploring various electronic genres, covering ground as varied as trip-hop, ambient, drone, progressive electronic, and synthpop. Their work is epic, exploratory, and often sneakily playful. Certain throughlines exist in Ulver’s discography, but they are found less in the specific musical elements and more in the intention behind the music: a sigh of loneliness, a lament for the lost innocence of childhood, a dream of transcendence.
They also have a penchant for collaboration that has led them in the direction of drone metal and modern classical. The core trio of vocalist Kristoffer Rygg (the sole remaining founder) and instrumentalists Tore Ylwizaker and Jørn H. Sværen, alongside a frequently rotating cast of collaborators that have been brought into the wolves’ den, conjure up a different musical palette with nearly every release. In some ways, exploring Ulver’s musical universe does not mean discovering one great band but discovering many great and radically different bands that happen to share a few members in common. Rarely returning to the same musical style more than once, Ulver can now be counted among the most daring experimentalists in modern electronic music.
With 30 years’ worth of studio albums, live recordings, and collaborative works to discover, Ulver’s discography can be daunting. This guide covers seven albums showcasing some of their most drastic musical shifts.
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The liner notes for Perdition City (Music to an Interior Film) read: “This is music for the stations before and after sleep. Headphones and darkness recommended.” When Ulver released this downbeat, jazz-inflected electronic odyssey in 2000, it shocked metalheads and set a precedent for the musical experimentation to come. The record assembles glitchy trip-hop beats, noisy industrial flourishes, and mournful saxophone into a haunting and melancholy nocturnal soundscape. Though much of Perdition City is instrumental, its sparse lyrics paint a somber portrait of wandering a desolate half-empty city alone on a cold rainy night at some unspecified point in the cyberpunk future where everything has gotten just a bit worse, with only the crackle of untuned radios for company.
The long-form downtempo compositions that make up the first part of the record form a focused, cohesive mini-suite, followed by a more industrial-influenced second half rich with atmospheric ambient interludes. The influence of contemporary electronic artists with a focus on moody ambiance, such as Portishead and Boards of Canada, is undeniable, but Ulver also bring a focused intensity that’s entirely their own. Throughout the album, Ulver carefully juxtapose the heavier, noisier elements with moments of true beauty, capturing always-resonant themes of alienation, loneliness, and longing. Perdition City remains one of the most captivating works in Ulver’s discography, both because it signaled a shift towards experimentation and for its own inherent majesty.
On 2007’s Shadows of the Sun, Ulver continued developing the somber, contemplative electronic sound they introduced on Perdition City, but with a new approach to arrangement and songwriting. In a departure from Perdition City’s woozy trip-hop beats, Shadows of the Sun often eschews percussion altogether, instead focusing on the rhythms and textures of intricate, electronic-tinged instrumentation. Featuring the Oslo Session String Quartet, theremin contributed by Pamelia Kurstin, trumpet by Mathias Eick, and “supplemental shimmer” by guitarist Christian Fennesz, this album is a delicate wonderland of graceful desolation, like a sunrise after a long and troubled night.
With its ambient-influenced songs, Shadows of the Sun might easily appeal to fans of David Sylvian and Talk Talk, but its experimentation ensures that this album stands apart from such touchstones. A jagged sheet of noisy distortion might appear to suddenly split a song’s soundscape in two, while an unexpected aesthetic turn, such as the Black Sabbath cover “Solitude,” keeps the listener wondering what Ulver has in store next. This is music that revels in the smallest moments and decisions, from the whisper of a viola to the precise instant in which a wave of noise is deployed and the way those tiny moments shape our experience as a whole.
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Commissioned by the Tromsø KulturHus and recorded in collaboration with the Tromsø Chamber Orchestra, Messe I.X-VI.X seamlessly melds intricate chamber music arrangements with drums, guitar, and electronics, building a minimalist classical work that treasures silence as much as sound. Burbling synthesizers twinkle across neoclassical soundscapes like stars in a dark sky, and intricate string arrangements nestle alongside electric guitars. Its mood varies from contemplative to haunting to playful, shifting through unexpected territory with confidence.
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After years in each other’s orbits, Ulver and the legendary drone metal band Sunn O))) finally melded their musical approaches into a set of free improvisation pieces that showcase what makes both bands so revered on 2014’s Terrestrials. Ulver’s poignant melodies are a natural match for Sunn O)))’s moody atmospherics, and the addition of strings and trumpet lift these droning explorations out of the gloom. This is gentler, more contemplative music than most drone metal, and its cavernous sonic environment seems calculated to uplift the listener rather than crush them under waves of heavy distortion. Across these three pieces, the two bands craft a soundscape shaded in subtle dissonances and enlivened by moments of instrumental beauty, like dark clouds parting to reveal a ray of sunlight.
In 2017, Ulver decided it was time to dance. The Assassination of Julius Caesar is a deliriously groovy, synthpop concept album about the decadence and fall of Rome and its long history of brutality that stretches from the classical era to the modern day. It differs from Ulver’s previous breaks in tradition in its unashamed celebration of the dancefloor, which is re-invented as a site of pessimistic historical analysis critiquing the founding myths of Western civilization and exposing its violent underbelly. It’s downright thrilling to hear Ulver remake synthpop in their own image, combining bouncy electronic instrumentation and blissful pop hooks with baroque flourishes of weirdness.
“Rolling Stone,” the album’s epic centerpiece, might just be Ulver’s crowning achievement. Over nearly ten minutes, it develops from a piece of modern-day new wave, complete with sing-along backing vocals and a bassline so crunchy it must be heard to be believed, to an outburst of electronic noise and shrieking saxophone performed by the great Nik Turner, best known for his work with Hawkwind. Other highlights, such as the shimmering ballad “So Falls the World” or the dark, atmospheric closing track, display a full mastery of synthpop’s sonic palette. Ulver’s proud embrace of the genre may have come as a shock, but The Assassination of Julius Caesar proved that these iconoclasts were still growing and evolving with each new album.
Originally presented in 2018 as a two-night live performance enhanced by laser visuals at a storied Norwegian art museum and venue, Hexahedron is a transporting hour of industrial-tinged progressive electronic and ambient drone flecked with moments of spaced-out new wave. “Enter the Void,” the shimmering organ-focused drone opener, is a textual meditation indebted to classic electronic and krautrock artists such as Tangerine Dream, but the album soon takes off into further-ranging territory as it evolves through a series of expansive grooves. Ulver even manage to work in a synthpop-influenced piece in the form of “A Fearful Symmetry,” a return to their longstanding lyrical preoccupation with William Blake that features a masterful build of noisy tension before exploding into a pure pop confection. Ulver’s musical practice has grown to increasingly encompass live sound and improvisation over the last decade or so, and Hexahedron is a gleaming document of one of their most recent incarnations in this mode.
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Ulver celebrated Halloween in 2021 with the surprise release of this delightful piece of spooky kitsch. Inspired by their earlier performance of a live score to John Carpenter’s classic slasher Halloween (1981), this album, labeled a “Pandemic Pastime Project,” interpolates the film’s iconic soundtrack with Ulver’s own synthwave compositions and also features mixing from the underground horror synth star Carpenter Brut. It’s a playful album that pays tribute to an increasingly significant influence on Ulver’s sound, acknowledging the origins of the synthwave sound they’ve adopted while also winking at the band’s own fondness for darkness.
Halloween music has a rich history, from its campy 1960s heyday to its recent electronic revival. Though few fans would have predicted Ulver’s sudden outburst of holiday cheer, their entry into the Halloween music tradition feels in some ways like an inevitable step forward in the band’s constant evolution. Equal parts atmospheric and nostalgic, Scary Muzak is a perfect album to listen to on the spookiest night of the year.
