Abiding by the Groenemeyer-paradox: “Everything stays different” ULVER still go on and make their lonely rounds in their own sound cosmos. Nothing stays the same but though they remain true to themselves. One can expect everything and will though be surprised again. Shape shifters, Chameleons and metamorphosis artists… whatever you call them, you are right. In short: ULVER are true musical freethinkers, in all aspects!
Instruments, electronic experiments, vocal acrobatics, stylistic directions and fusions… everything is allowed. Not for the experiment’s sake, but because everything might wonderfully join together if you let the creativity flow. So every ULVER record stands for itself and can’t be compared with the old or the new. You should not actually. Every album reveals its own universe worth to be discovered with an open mind.
In this spirit Shadows Of The Sun invites you to another trip, a journey into the depths of the shadows. Shadows Of The Sun is a quiet, contemplative album, much ambient-like, ruminant, melancholic-draped and ethereally beautiful. The first listening impression might give a minimalist sound approach, but with every new run Shadows Of The Sun reveals its variety in instruments and sound collages, with songs being complex and sometimes even tricky.
Although the opening track Eos runs over five minutes, it appears to the listener as a short intro, leading over to All The Love, the first highlight on this record. Here ULVER already draw on all resources, blending in a saxophone and piano they love to use, melancholic soundscapes, a catchy hookline, some disharmonies and an abrupt end, which is not, since it seamlessly leads over to Like Music, which again has a break in its middle, separating this song in two chapters: the first marks the end of All The Live, the second one works as an interlude bridging to following Virgil. This song offers many string melodies that again find an abrupt end by very distorted sounds, before the title track picks up the red thread again. To hear out the multiplicity of instruments and sounds takes its time and thus guarantees and ongoing listening pleasure, no matter of at the third or thirtieth run. I personal like the second half of Shadows Of The Sun most. It is full of darkness and melancholy as in Let The Children Go and Solitude or deadly sad piano and violin melodies as in and Funcbrae or What Happend?. Sounds like an Er-Hu violin…
Shadows Of The Sun is a wonderful album to loose yourself and to drift away in own or foreign worlds. Just abrupt song endings at some point let me nag a little bit.