Back in October of 2018, Ulver‘s presence was requested at a Red Bull Music event taking part in their home town of Oslo. The request was for new work of a drone type, something that might unfold over a length of time, but at a natural pace. The group started to reconvene to work through ideas with one or two members missing, but with itinerant guitarist Stian Westerhus turning up to add some extra textures. The even itself took place on 13 October in a former fish warehouse filled with dry ice and lasers as the band took to the stage, and the results were captured for posterity on this sublime disc.
Drone Activity opens with the sounds of post-apocalyptic desert winds searing across a blasted landscape, the scrape of metal coming from destroyed structures buried under the shifting sands, the remains of an interred cityscape, long forgotten. In its place, something immense is preparing to rise up amidst the thunder of a distant dust storm. The scree of metal is harsh and jarring, and this slow build of tension gradually subsumes the initial attack and a new panorama unfolds before our eyes, things restructuring, growing further in stature while a constant throb of energy maintains a forward motion. The energy and power is unrelenting, and you have the impression that the band is feeding off one another, ideas morphing as elements clash Titanic struggles take place and the sounds resemble the forging of an inexplicable superstructure or the merging of tectonic plates.
It is quite an extraordinary opening and one that must have been an epic experience for those attendees. Although the pressure recedes for the opening of track two, that gentle pace still builds interminably with the rhythm of distant explosions uncoiling over a miasma of wailing and throbbing. Helicopters sound in the distance and the feel is of the aftermath of something terrible, that enveloping peace that follows destruction, as if reeling form the finality of something huge. The slow, steady sense of unfolding is overwhelmed as great momentum gathers. Shards of guitar and scaffold pole clangs emanate from the roiling sound, half-caught snippets are added and subtracted from the writhing stew, the sound never staying still, but with a five-note motif that lends a sense of continuity to these uncertain times. By now, the audience is starting to be overcome, so things travel further out into the distant reaches, sounds travelling immense lengths, bouncing off abandoned satellites, fragmented and fatigued; but as ever, inexorable rhythm appears from the dust, and this time it is insistent and rallying. The intensity and power is bound to cause heads to nod and bodies to move as it pushes the piece hard, with electronic embellishment pushing it way beyond drone into a kind of hypnotic repetition that visits past glories, then exceeds them. It is as if Ulver are searching for something that goes beyond the repetitive, beyond the hypnotic, beyond that mantric insistence to a new undiscovered realm.The lengths of these pieces are perfect for this search for something new, but after the overwhelming intensity that has just been, the final track feels as though it offers some respite and with its tabla rhythm and a touch of a marimba-like effect, it is almost pretty, with sunset guitar licks shimmering in a sun-drenched aftermath. It can’t last though, and the tone changes, becoming more forceful with the guitar more strident, crying and howling with unfettered despair, gradually dissipating like a storm watched from land as it recedes across the ocean, leaving peace and tranquillity once again.
-Mr Olivetti-
