ULVER – A Quick Fix Of Melancholy

If there is one thing you can always expect from an ULVER album: then it's that every new output is far away from everything Kristoffer Garm Rygg, Tore Ylwizaker and Jurn H. Sveren have done before. After their grandiose release Perdition City, followed by the EP Silence Teaches You How To Sing (and its single) ULVER broke new ground in creating their first soundtrack for the Lyckantropen movie (I warmly recommend to everybody open-minded musically). Now they come up with another EP A Quick Fix Of Melancholy where they pick up with what they started on this soundtrack: experimental and minimalist soundscapes. Just the electronics got wrapped into an orchestral sound. Despite of tinkling sound cascades that somewhat reminds me of rain and water at cold winter days the atmosphere is subtle, dark and disturbing. Little Blue Birds surprises with operatically ethereal singing added by Garms clean voice. This song ends abrupt leaving the listener quite confused. Doom Sticks has an almost cheerful note with its tinkling tones, parts that tend to military marches and dramatic cello strings instrumentally bridging over to Vowels its lyrics were taken from Eunoia by Christian Bök. And again this alienated singing that moves you to new levels of inner thinking, as the entire EP does. Eitttlane is a re-arranged version of Nattleite from Kveldssanger album released back in 1996. If you know this one, you will be surprised by this new version which is also available on ULVER’s 1st Decade In The Machines.
A Quick Fix Of Melancholy is a wonderful piece of music, strange, far away from anything else, full of seeming antagonism but falling into places to an harmonic entity. And of course it’s way too short. It’s just beautiful …