Pale Ravine hangs poised and calm in the air, tinged
with dark blues and soot-flecked grays, a lofty mass
of cloud draped over an inky black stretch of sea, it
passes through the night’s sky like a murderer
through the alleyway. That it stands as an ode to dusty
8mm film reels and the majestic Norwegian landscape
comes as no surprise - each expansive, brooding composition
is a harrowing breath of horror film ambiance. The dark
clusters of strings, gasping voices and grimy gurgle
of electronics that are smeared across Thread
so acutely capture the anxiety of the movie murder scene.
Some few songs later, Loft, with its portentous ambiance,
banging of rusted machinery and squirming shuffles of
percussion is equal turns spooky and sinister. On a
whole, sustained, soothing sonorities drift in and out
of tonality, are punctuated by emphatic yet empathetic
piano motifs or a slowly crescending swell of strings,
and are often gnawed at by some dying synthesizer splutter
or the creaking of floorboards. Though seldom used,
the subtle background events, from the buzzing of wasps
to the thud of a typewriter, ground this otherwise airy
assemblage of sound into more rustic, relatable sentiments.
Throughout, Erik Skodvin and Otta Totland reveal a scope
far broader than that exhibited on their debut effort,
Neon City. Unlike that EP, which sometimes
gave the impression that its wheels were grinding, pieces
are endowed with enough variation to keep the proceedings
from capsizing over into complete redundancy, such as
on White Lake, when plunking piano lines and
lower-end bass rumbles provide a moments respite from
all the gloom and doom. For this reason, over some fifty-two
minutes, this duo bundles lilting string arrangements
and eerie electronics in a precise, well-articulated
performance. Even though they make this well-worn tradition
work for them, each composition is content to stay in
the realms of heavily amplified strings, whistling wind
noises, pinwheels of transmitter beeps and stately piano
melodies, and this structure is never much entertained
and something with and through this duo might escape
into less cultivated terrain. Similar to the efforts
by Marsen Jules, Lovely Midget and, to some extent,
William Basinski, these murky, mutating, sprawling compositions
sink their claws into the listener; once in, like a
virus, the malefic mood of this album spreads until
it is all that is felt or seen. Pale Ravine
is indeed infectious in much this way - one wishes only
that the dose wasn't so clinically given.
Max Schaefer
4/5 |
