Sunn O))) & Ulver
Terrestrials

"Apparently the Earth did not shift off its axis when Sunn O))) and Ulver met in Oslo on that fateful night", and if O' Malley says it, you can trust him. A wizard of marketing and provocation, the "better half" of Greg Anderson within Sunn O))), for skill, luck, or good promotion, one of the most influential formations on the extreme music front of the third millennium, Stephen O' Malley tends to downplay the significance of what is actually a dream come true for many: seeing the logos of Sunn O))) and Ulver side by side on the cover of the same album. You may try to paint it as a quarrel between friends: such an operation inevitably creates great expectations, not only among the fans of the two bands but also among everyone who follows with interest the evolutions of a music "extreme/no longer extreme/yet still extreme (at least conceptually)" of which the two formations are credible (or incredible) representatives. Indeed: we won't proclaim a miracle, but a sneaky grin of wicked satisfaction will materialize on our faces.

Arising from a session carried out in the distant summer of 2008, when Sunn O))) landed in Oslo as guests of the Øya Festivalen, later retouched in the years to follow, and finally released at the dawn of 2014, "Terrestrials" is the communion of two musical entities as distant in form as they are close in spirit: a journey that starts from afar, at the dawn of the nineties, when Ulver were taking their first steps and still played black-metal, and Sunn O))) didn't even exist (the friendship was then blossoming, initially through correspondence, between O'Malley and Kristoffer Rygg, years when pen and paper, registered mail, and recorded cassettes had not yet been supplanted by the internet). A friendship that quietly persisted over time, resurfaced in the second half of the 2000s with the drafting of a piece, "CutWOODed," written with four hands—or rather, eight: those of O' Malley and Anderson, and those of Rygg and Tore Ylwizaker, at the time the other half of Ulver, already ventured into the world of electronics. Then came the turn of the Aethenor experience, which saw O' Malley, Rygg, and Daniel O' Sullivan (who would shortly become the "fourth" member of Ulver) united in the work that led to "Betimes Black Cloudmass." A few live dates together and then finally a real album, this "Terrestrials" which we will now analyze.

Three long tracks for a total duration of thirty-five minutes is the result of five and a half years of discontinuous work between the Crystal Canyon and Oslo: if at the time of the original sessions, Sunn O))) was working on that "Monoliths & Dimensions," which remains to this day their last studio work, a masterpiece of maturity, already imbued with those jazzy moods that may have slipped right from the pockets of the Norwegian colleagues, Ulver themselves had recently published the excellent "Shadows of the Sun," a refined chamber ambient essay that would open a new path for them, one that would soon lead them to "Wars of the Roses," and later to their latest (master)work, the superlative "Messe I.X-VI.X," with which this "Terrestrials" paradoxically has more than one aspect in common. So rest assured, fans of the little wolves: it's true that here the language of drone-ambient is spoken with the typical Sunn O))) dialect, but in the unfolding of the entire work, between the slow flow of drones and the majestic surges towards the shores of transcendentality, their touch will be clearly evident, that strange and indefinable essence that characterizes the winding path of the Norwegians, stage by stage, from "Perdition City" to the present day.

The opener "Let There Be Light" evokes from the title the Pink Floyd of "A Saucerful of Secrets," summoned in the atmosphere at more than one juncture (yes: for this time, the Sabbathian specter is left in the attic!). The track, over its ten-plus minutes, slowly evolves, crawling uneasily through the low and dense fogs of an ambient dominated by reverberated guitars and solemn bass tolls, a mist occasionally torn by the sharp fluttering of a trumpet clearly marked by Ulver, until the powerful finale in which the same trumpet, shaken by heavy percussion, seems to turn into that of judgment: perhaps the invocation of the sun, an ancient pagan rite as old as the world itself, revitalized through an avant-garde language that celebrates the restless psychedelia of the third millennium. It is the slow transition from darkness to light that is described through these notes.

If the second track "Western Horn" is a dronic nightmare that does nothing but diligently continue the discourse undertaken with the previous piece, perhaps with the intent to dig even deeper into the listener's unconscious, the quarter-hour of "Eternal Return" allows Rygg & co. to rise from the viscous collapse of bass and guitars and deliver the winning strike: it is indeed at the seventh minute, after seductive phrases of icy electronics, occasionally caressed by the swirling of viola and violin, it is at the seventh minute, as mentioned, that Rygg's voice finally appears. With his fleeting appearance (a typical "garmian crescendo," from the very low sepulchral tones to the stars, up, up, and ever faster, along a steep escalation of epic declamations) it is precisely the maximo leader of Ulver (a voice, a certainty) who puts his signature on the most emotional moment of the work. A work that, let's remember, plays very much, if not entirely, on nuances, strengthened by excellent sounds and a meticulous care in the mixing stage that is nothing short of obsessive.

A journey "beyond the dark side," whether it be metaphysics, spiritual ascent or psychoanalytic excavation, "Terrestrials," is nothing more, nothing less, than what one might expect from Sunn O))) and Ulver together. Keeping in mind O' Malley's words – "We are neither Miles Davis nor John Coltrane" – it is up to the individual listener to judge if the glass is half full or half empty.