Osi and the Jupiter
Uthuling Hyl

I love traveling because it helps me discover myself, get to know myself, reinvent myself. Every journey, even if it is just ten days, is an opportunity for growth. If you resonate with the place you are in, you sometimes manage to discover sides of yourself that you didn't know, and develop them. Thus, every journey is a child of the previous one; it carries with it your transformed and changed "self," and therefore, it is an evolution.

Music is also a journey in its own way, a mental one this time: over time, album after album, you grow, mature, evolve, appreciate things you would never have appreciated before or, conversely, detest what you had listened to until the day before yesterday.

And when physical and mental travel come together, when the latter even allows you to relive the emotions of the former, a kind of magic happens. Then you feel as if you were there, on that ferry that in the summer of 2012 sailed with you aboard the cold Norwegian sea, on that seemingly endless route that separated Flåm from Bergen. Sitting at the stern, I watched the land slowly drift away, the green of the mountains alternating with the red and blue flashes of the Norwegian flag that, fluttering in the wind, sometimes came between me and the mainland. The day was splendid, and the clear sky seemed to reflect the blue of the sea, and not vice versa; it wasn’t cold, at least by Norwegian standards, but it’s true that on the ship's deck, the wind could be felt. I sat simply staring at the rippling waves and the wooded coasts taking turns one after another, sitting with my legs crossed and hands in my pockets, thinking about nothing, with only my trusty MP3 player and background music. The peace was such that at one point I also fell asleep, or at least, I was in a pleasant, relaxing state of half-sleep, in harmony with the world and everything surrounding me, be it a forest, a waterfall, the sea, or a fjord.

Several hours later the ferry docked in Bergen, and I had never left that bench at the stern of the boat. Descending the wooden and metal staircase, I felt different, changed, enriched. That journey within a journey had changed me, only I didn’t know it at the time. Fortunately, today the fruits of that change are still here with me; I renew them every time, I always carry them with me, revitalize them, enrich them, and thank them for making me a bit better.

And when I least expect it, even when I am comfortably seated on a bench in a park reading, with an album in my headphones, these memories rise, reconnecting with what I am listening to at that moment. A gust of cold wind on a clear, sunny winter day, and the magic happens again.

I only came across Osi and the Jupiter a few days ago, but I was blown away: behind this project is the mind of the American Sean Deth, who in September 2017 released the current "Uthuling Hyl.”

From a quick glance at the cover and the artwork suggestions, we might think we are dealing with a Wardruna emulator: let's say that for 30% it is so, but fortunately, the work of our artist distances itself from the aforementioned group. It is a folk ambient album, with tribal and shamanic percussion which, combined with elements of drone and synth, weave mystical and hypnotic atmospheres that promote meditation and introspection. On Osi and the Jupiter's Bandcamp page, it reads that since its inception "the project has been a spiritual connection between nature and the will of the old Gods – channelled through various representations of life, death, and rebirth, this connection speaks through these musical creations, resonating as wordless tributes to these nebulous yet fundamental concepts.” Thus, there is no geographical connotation, depending on the listener's experiences, it can evoke the Norwegian fjords or the forests of North America, the tribal chants of the cold northern European peoples or the shamanism of the natives. It takes the optimal combination of events and situations to be able to resonate with these nine pieces, but once the connection is made, you obtain a journey of great beauty and magic, intimate, reflective, and calming.

Musically, perhaps it’s not an album for everyone, yet for the universality of the way it speaks to our spirits, I feel that each of us might find a part of ourselves in this musical journey.