ULVER 9

The only thing predictable about a new Ulver release is that you never know quite what to expect, And we don’t like the idea of having to drag this material along for another year. We’ve already and Blood Inside, the band’s first “proper album” since 2000’s Perdition City, is no exception. invested a couple years on this album, and investing another year just taking it out in poor imita- There’s little sign of black metal left in the Norwegians’ sound, although Ulver is still no easy listen, tions of what we do on record—it wouldn’t sit well with us. To be honest, someday I’m sure we will and Blood Inside conveys some of the bold power of black metal, if in a more civilized form. refocus the energy at doing something in a live context, but I don’t think you’re ever going to see For Ulver, taking five years between albums is not a sign of inactivity. In that gap the band has us go and play songs that you’ve heard before. It’s going to take some effort, I guess, and right now released several EPs, an album of remixes, and two soundtracks. Founding vocalist Kristoffer Rygg there are other things we want to do. We have some other beasts we need to give birth to.” (known variously as Garm or Trickster G.) describes scoring for films as a “welcome challenge.” These “other beasts” may have little hear-able connection with Ulver’s black metal roots, but “It’s good to make a proper album again, but at the same time I always think it’s good to do a they are inevitably fed by that past legacy, and the band’s background is part of what makes them lot different things, and all it’s a way to get certain ideas out that may not be fully developed or fit hard to place. “That’s definitely got something to do with it, not really fitting in anywhere. We into a long player album context but are still important components. All the things we’ve done from weren’t into rave music in the early 90s; we were into the dark stuff. I think that’s just a generally Perdition City to now, acquiring new influences and learning new ways of making and processing misunderstood thing. Some people seem to think that we’ve aspired to get away from black metal music, have no doubt shaped what has become Blood Inside.” Ulver already has three or four more but it’s not something that I’ve thought much about. It’s been more that we take with us the things projects in the works to follow Blood Inside, but Rygg is unsure which will materialize first. “I do we want to take with us from all the places that we’ve been. And we’ll go new places as well, I think there will be kind of a counter move to Blood Inside being all big and pompous sounding. guess.” There might be a very, very quiet and calm album around the corner.” With that philosophy, Ulver has achieved a great deal of critical acclaim in recent years, including Untypically for a musician promoting his newest release, Rygg admits to having mixed feelings nominations for Norwegian Grammy awards and a film music composers’ award as well. Rygg wel- about Blood Inside, but he explains that it’s not unusual for him—the material is too fresh, and comes the appreciation but says that it doesn’t change the way he works. “It’s always great to get some he’s too close. “First and foremost, what I’m happy about now is just that I’m sitting with a distinct good feelings back, but it doesn’t affect how I think in terms of the music. It’s not like if we receive an feeling that it really is different music and doesn’t resemble much out there in terms of our references. It’s just kind of a cryptic referential language, so I’m happy about that, having made something that bypasses all genres and all conventional ways of focusing on music. But in terms of being happy about the album itself, that’s another story, I guess. I have a limited capability of being happy about music straight out of the making. I’m always really ambivalent about things when we’re finished. It’s irrevocable in a sense; you can’t call it back. You’re doomed to kind of just sit around and think ‘Oh, why didn’t I do that? Why didn’t we do this?’ So, to me success is always a relative phenomenon.” Extending that relativity and ambivalence to Ulver’s earlier material, Rygg similarly refers to the older Ulver albums as “relative failures,” and laughs as he says it. “At the same time that’s part of what makes it interesting. For us it has always been the road, the process, so that’s okay. It’s something we can come to terms with, even though it’s hard at times to be self loathing to such a degree,” he says, laughing again. Blood Inside is like other recent Ulver material in the sense that it combines a wide array of elements—including orchestral music, jazz, electronica—a characteristic Rygg is well aware of. “We have quite a few references in our music, I think. We listen to a lot of music and we’re into a lot of things and that reflects in the sheer difficulty of album, in the sense of being able to place it somewhere. It’s kind of a little bit of a lot of things.” This time the band had a little help from outside, not with writing but with the overall effect of the new album—from well known producer/mixer/artist Ronan Chris Murphy. “He started the mixing process, so he defined a lot of how things were turning out. He kind of outlined the aural feeling of the album. But it was always the plan that we would take those things back with us to Norway and rework them some more. This album has a quite different sound, more kind of retro rock-ish sound and mix, and I guess he’s been pretty crucial to that element.” Having received an invitation to work with Murphy several years ago, when Ulver began to think about bringing in a third party for this album they didn’t have to look very far. But why bring in someone else now? “I think slowly realizing that we’re kind of becoming possibly more difficult and non-communicating. And also we’d been working with the material for some time and we figured it might be a good idea to just go away. It wasn’t necessarily getting someone else to do just the technical work, because we’re perfectly capable of doing that ourselves, but just getting away.” Something else new with Blood Inside is the band’s decision to create a video for the first time, a gesture to increasing visibility and public relations. “It’s kind of difficult for me because I usually have a hard time with this video format,” Rygg says. “It felt a bit awkward for me trying to transcribe musical material onto such a different format, so we just opted for something which turned out to be a quite ridiculous borderline video, a humorous take on public relations.” The video for the song “It Is Not Sound” combines several biblical images. “The tower of Babel, communicating with god, stretching for high ideals and ultimately falling short, failing, and getting killed in the process,” Rygg explains. “It’s kind of just taking all of those Light Words About things into a more or less ridiculous context. It’s our failed attempt at communicating with god.” A pope character, played by Rygg, figures large in the video. When asked why, Rygg is playful rather than informative. “In my latter days I’ve become quite the prophet, so I kind of foresaw the death Weighty Music of John Paul, and figured I’d run for the new guy.” Although there are ballet-like parallels between the animation and the music, Ulver’s new video a w a r d , by Laura Wiebe Taylor is not meant to illustrate the lyrics, says Rygg. “The whole idea for that video came in mind because then we’ll we wanted to do a video for ‘For the Love of God.’ We actually started doing it. We just had a change have to do of heart, I guess, in regards to song. There are a few lyrics in ‘It Is Not Sound’ that are even more this twice. It’s not going to dictate our moves. I think it’s a general tendency in the music business borderline, I think, than ‘For the Love of God,’ but in some way the lyrics from ‘For the Love of God’ as well—I mean, you’re very popular one day, and the next month you’re nothing.” fit better. But it doesn’t matter. A video is always something on top of something already made, so Knowing how fickle the music business is, and feeling ambivalent about his own material, Rygg by necessity it’s something else. For me it’s not an intrinsic part of the album.” still finds a sense of personal satisfaction in what he does. “Sometimes I’m totally in love with Picking who would execute Rygg’s concept for the video was apparently an easy and obvious myself, other times I just wish it all to hell. But yeah, for the most part it feels like we’re doing im- choice. “There are two guys [Gustave Doré and Albrecht Dürer] who worked on the video, but one of portant work. This might sound pretentious, but in my mind we’re building something that’s gonna them is the front guy in a band on my label [Jester Records] called Bogus Blimp. It’s a weird visual stand out in the cultural landscape in the long term, even though some of our bricks might not be radio theatre rock act—hard to describe—but he’s got a strong visual connection to the music, so all that solid. Seriously, we’re the musical Gaudis,” he laughs. “Is that a perfect illusion, or is the it was really easy to go with him.” illusion perfect? That’s the question I need to struggle with on an everyday basis. So, ambivalent, Though now embracing the visual, Rygg has long been vocal in his disavowal of live perfor- yes. Feel accomplished? Yeah, that too.” mance, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Ulver fans will never see the band perform in the flesh. Feeling accomplished is a fortunate pay off, because for Rygg, the music never goes away; it’s “I’ve been so stuck up about it for so many years that, truth be told, I might even enjoy it,” Rygg beyond a full time job. “It’s not like I go home and turn my mind off. It’s always there, consciously admits. “But at the same time, I think we really need to find some way to make it feel comfortable. and un-.” Which is good news for those fans raving from the other side of the fence.