ULVER

ACKNOWLEDGE THIS: Yes, this is the myspace profile for ULVER. No, the members will not see any messages sent to the inbox. The viewing/handling of all messages is done by Mr. Swearingen, who lives approximately 5 100 miles away from Oslo.

LATEST NEWS FROM THE BAND:

“WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”

We write 2012 and 1984 is a fond memory. It is dark and disorienting. The spotlight came with a dimmer effect and we find ourselves turning down good offerings. Now is the time for introspection.

Rites of Spring 2011, from Albion to Finlandia, Stonehenge and vodka. We like to mix it up. Elemental for an educated bunch. Queen Anne is dead.

And then came Autumn. Damnation had us sweating. We have said it before, and we say it again: festivals are hazardous, people and place being out of control. So, sorry about the grim faces, we will never be The Bee Gees. We learned afterwards that it sounded alright front of house, thank God – Chris Fullard obviously – and salve, Regina, Mater misericordiae.

Back on the horse. Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece – the here and now of the declining West. Massive props to Kostas and the people at Didi Music once again, for upgrading us to Athen's finest club, Fuzz, during revolts and recession. Also pretty special was performing deep under the Cidade da Cultura in Santiago de Compostela. What a place! And speaking of heavenly places, Teatro Regio, Parma, surpassing all:


Photo by Seth Beaudreault | Click to enlarge

Blessed be our devoted road warriors Chris and Alesh, for their extraordinary sufferance, and Seth the barefoot inuit lover McCandless.

We are truly sorry about the cancellation of our gig in Chile. It was the first concert booked outside Europe and synchronously the first we have cancelled. The United States of America: paramount paranoia, parsimonious promoters and outright impossible interest rates. European in theory, but very exclusive in practice. Sorry, but we think there might be something wrong with the politico-financial system you've got going there guys. Come down in the world.

Have you heard about Gandhi?

He ate simple vegetarian food and also undertook long fasts as means of both self-purification and social protest. Things to think about in the age of the wolf. Childhood's End is near. Sixteen Sixties songs. Its arrival will end all war, help form a world government and turn the planet into a near-utopia. Doublethink. Every man and woman is a star.

There's ..one.. concert this year: Roadburn, Tilburg, Holland. Since it may be the last one, for the foreseeable future, we plan to make it a frenzy – of the psychedelic kind.


Click image to proceed to the Roadburn site

For those who did not get to see us live: The Opera Blu-ray/DVD should be in the shop these days, long overdue. We apologise for the delay, it was out of our hands, in the hands of the factory. And while we think it could have looked great in Christmas wrapping, Kscope decided to pause further to run free of The Mormon Tabernacle Choirs of December. Read our and Mr Stig Sæterbakken's summaries below, and check out Kscope's minisite for further information, video preview and ordering.

Also, we have just released a deluxe double LP edition of golden oldie Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven & Hell, via Neuropa.



Click images to proceed to the Neuropa site

And finally, if you feel we deserve it, please vote Ulver for Best Norwegian Live Act 2011 here. Our gratitude to Natt&Dag for the nomination.

Happy new year. It sure looks promising.

Ulver, Chichen Itza, January 18 2012.



Digibook design by Valnoir | Metastazis 2011

LINER NOTES FROM ULVER LIVE AT THE NATIONAL NORWEGIAN OPERA BLUE-RAY/DVD

On the last day of May 2009 Ulver decided to stumble on stage for the first time since our one (and till then only) concert back in 1993. We had been animals in hiding, uncomfortable with the world. It took us 15 years to muster the will and want to “interact with society”, that is, perform live. It was about survival in culture – that's a given – but also a cultured survival.

For those who do not play along, there exists the danger of considering themselves better than others and misusing their critique of society as an ideology for their own private interest. (Theodor Adorno)

We had been thinking about getting out there for a while. Norwegian author and artistic director of The Norwegian Festival of Literature, Stig Sæterbakken, had been on our case for a few years already, having had great success bringing Antony and the Johnsons to the festival two years before. It is in large part thanks to his persuasive arguments that we are writing this. Part of the story is also that Stig had resigned his position due to the controversy aroused following the decision by the board of the festival to renege his invitation to the historian and Holocaust denier David Irving to lecture at the festival. The theme, or slogan, of the festival that year was Truth. And while we think not even God can change truth, it is not simple.

The invitation and the witch-hunt that followed was a challenge to us all, and we accepted by putting on display the grandiose spectacle of the Third Reich and the horror, the horror behind the scenes. We were a bit apprehensive about how that would fare, but the audience seemed to understand and appreciate. We believe, and hope, the applause was for us, and not some of the things we forced them to witness. In the end, it all comes down to instinct. The lioness hunting and taking down the youngest of the zebras on the savannah. The boy child looking them in the eye, with allegation.

We took it to heart and made a handful more appearances that year, and in some stunning settings too, such as Queen Elizabeth Hall in London and Gagarin 205 in Athens. Our second concert was, believe it or not, in front of close to ten thousand people at Brutal Assault, an open-air metal-music festival in The Czech Republic. Even though our foundation is in metal we felt out of our element (and definitely out of synch). Nonetheless we seemed to get some attention if not for anything other than being a contrast to the make-up misanthropy which is pop in satanic circles. We know.

Experience is the name every one gives their mistakes. (Oscar Wilde)

And without further ado, come February 2010, we embarked on a monthlong journey throughout Europe, meandering in and out of stages, from the art noveau of La Cigale in Paris to the monolithic Volksbühne in Berlin. We owe the world to our agent Mark Lewis. The last leg of the tour we brought along our beloved little theremin-faerie Pamelia Kurstin, fading out in Helsinki, two nights in execution.

A few months later, Saturday July 31, we were back in black. A grand renaissance at The Norwegian National Opera had been initiated by our late management, Ramble On. Tomas got out his 26" kick drum and Tore his menagerie of vintage synths and keys. We had two Steinways, tam-tam, timpani, the works. Even Chris, our sound-sasquatch, got to pick the PA system of his dreams. Ouch!

Unfortunately Pamelia could not make it to Norway this time due to the imminent birth of Aulver (yes, you read the name right), so we flew in another favourite from Vienna, Christian Fennesz, to share the stage with us. We are lucky to have gifted people in our lives. Singular artist Ian Johnstone left his Asturian goats and beehives behind to make two of his rare performances: welcoming everyone as Mr. Ark Todd in a static dance under a levitating moon, and parting with a pillar, on the skeleton legs of a horse, pale and naked as nature intended. Good with a pinch of salt, the two pieces were accompanied by piano prepared by Daniel and the sound of a sleeping beast from Kris' pad.*

This concert is the culmination and completion of our first year as a live incarnation. That's how we see it. We had just written the song “England” and premiered it here, hinting at what was to come. Wars of the roses was recorded the following fall and released this spring, coinciding with another European tour playing only the new stuff. We had to break free from the past, as always, and the self-imposed prison that is time and projection. Counting down. Wolves evolve.

It should be admitted that we did this a few more times post-opera. Flow Festival in Helsinki, Kampnagel Live Arts Festival in Hamburg, Palladium in Warsaw – again with Christian Fennesz, as both support and guest in our set. Last, but not least, the modern milestone Casa da Música in Porto together with Throbbing Gristle a mere week before Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson passed away. Ian, who was bound to Sleazy by having loved and lost the enigma known to most as Jhonn Balance five years earlier, was meant to be there with us. But it conflicted with the opening of his beautiful exhibition, The 23 stab wounds of Julius Caesar, Horse Hospital, London. Lord, how the good must suffer.

In the void of Coil, we end with an idiom attributed to them: What kind of animal are you? Think about it. It may be written in water, but life goes on. And when it one day – as they say – flashes before your eyes. Make sure it's worth watching.

With that in mind: This documents Ulver's first foray on stage, in optimum. Filmed by six HD cameras and recently mixed on SSL in our own Crystal Canyon Studios, Oslo. We are not sure if there were ghosts in the machine, or what, but due to the original multi-tracking being not so ... well, multi, we were forced to take tracks from the Casa da Música gig. But fuck it – everything is illusion. All the world's a stage sayeth Shakespeare. But who would have thought we would turn up there, at the main stage of the Oslo Opera House?

If pride is a sin, we are guilty. Forgive us.

Ulver, Oslo, July 2011.

* From Chris Watson's Outside the Circle of Fire, “Waiting”: the purr of a cheetah close up against a baobab tree, via Kaoss Pad. Published by Touch Music (MCPS).


Photo by Lars K. Lande 2010 | Click image to see concert footage

THE ART OF BETRAYAL

All silver shirt and shaky legs as I walked on stage in Maihaugsalen, Lillehammer, on the 31st of May 2009, to introduce Ulver at what was, strictly speaking, their second concert, though it felt like their first, all things considered. But however much I wanted to say “for the first time”, I had to comply with the required level of precision by resorting to a dull “for the first time in fifteen years” instead. It didn't really matter, though, since the experience was still that of a maiden voyage. And backstage was a bunch of guys whose legs were even shakier than mine. Yes, this was truly a night for intense emotion and frayed nerves.

A one-hour set that blew our brains out, nothing more, nothing less. Eventually, Kris had to grab the microphone and apologise: “I'm sorry, that was all.” Adding to the uniqueness of the performance was the fact that out of all the possible venues in the world of pop and rock music, it took place at a literature festival in a small idyllic city in the middle of No(r)w(ay)here, widely unknown save for two historic events over the past decades, the Winter Olympics in 1994 and the Mossad liquidation of Moroccan waiter Ahmed Bouchikhi (mistaken for Ali Hassan Salameh, chief of operations for the Palestinian terrorist group Black September) in 1973. In other words, it was perfect.

It took some time and effort to make it happen. And what a magnificent metamorphosis the band had gone through during that aeon-like period between their first and second live incarnation. The two words projected on the screen as people entered Maihaugsalen – Forgive us – were in this respect as appropriate to the moment as they were true to the past. Jean Genet wrote: “Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing of ecstasy at all.” And the boldness of the changes undergone by Ulver over their soon-to-be twenty years of existence is a masterpiece of the art of betrayal. Never resting, never confident, they've explored just about every road ahead of them, and in doing so, time and time again left their fans in blissful wonder as to what comes next. But through their continuous betrayal of any possible expectation, they've betrayed themselves most of all. And I think the need – and willingness – to betray oneself is the inner flame of any creative force. If there is a major challenge, it is that of transgressing one's own limitations, of destroying whatever concepts, superimposed or self-inflicted, may exist about who you are and what you stand for, of cultivating your doubts rather than strengthening your convictions. The importance of being uncertain, simply put.

If early Ulver was an umbrella, and their second coming a sewing machine, then present-day Ulver is the dissecting table whereupon they meet. Their night at the opera in 2010, beautifully framed by Ian Johnstone's gnomelike pre- and postlude appearances, represented the ultimate anointing of this entire charade of seemingly contradictory identities. And as the closing line – What kind of animal are you? – materialised on the screen, the question at hand was easy to answer: Bastard. I'm a fucking bastard. As is Ulver. As such, they capture the unrest and uneasiness and inner conflict of any reasonably vibrant and self-conscious individual. Being alive means having Angst. Being an artist means exploring that Angst. Rock 'n' roll is here to disturb.

Ian Johnstone and I met the day after the opera gig, and together with my wife Elizabeth and our youngest daughter Jenny we went to the Emanuel Vigeland mausoleum at Slemdal, Oslo, for a private viewing that Yvonne at the museum was kind enough to host. And somehow, entering the glowing darkness of the Vigeland tomb with its dimly lit frescoes of ecstasy and pain seemed a perfectly logical step to take from yesterday's massive attack.

Ian, who was there for the first time, was overwhelmed, and got a carte blanche from Yvonne as we left to come back and do a performance of some sort in the mausoleum, anytime he'd like. We then walked down to the city centre to visit friend and artist Sverre Malling in his studio, with a sensation resembling that of leaving the opera some fourteen or fifteen hours earlier. If the Ulver concert was the kill that weekend, then the Vigeland mausoleum was death itself. Felt like a nice place to be, I have to admit.

Stig Sæterbakken, Lillehammer, July 19 2011.


Shirt design by Kristin Bøyesen | www.soup.no | Click to enlarge