LP Review: Skáphe, Wagner Ӧdegård

 I've always had pretty diverse interests in music. In high school, I predominantly listened to heavy metal and punk, but I also listened intently to funk, classical music, and, of course, '80s pop. Since then, I've expanded my repertoire to include celtic music, synthwave, and, one of my favorites: "uncategorizable".

I only occasionally blog about music. I suppose it's easy to just let music be in the background of my life. This is contradictory to my life as a young man, when music was right at the forefront. It really was one of the most important things in my life, because I could afford it to be so. With crazy schedules, kids, work, and life trials in general, music has become something I turn on when I'm doing other things. 

Yes, I've attended live concerts for many years (especially pre-Covid) and always enjoy that release. But only recently have I really honed in on music like I used to as a kid. Maybe it's because of my discovery of my old record player after my parents died. It's a crappy little red and white job with a terrible little speaker. A real piece of junk. But it works still, and I love it. Finding it was like finding a piece of myself. For a number of years, vinyl LPs were passé, a relic of the past. Then people figured out that they liked the uncompressed sound of non-digital media. This has dovetailed nicely with my recent (within the past few years) desire to turn back to analog in my life. So I've started buying vinyl again. Not in any kind of big volume. I still buy digital albums and CDs because they are conveniently portable and easily accessible. But in a few rare cases, when the music is, in my eyes, worth it, I've bought vinyl. Again, this is rare, and I only reserve such buys for albums that I think are truly unique, something different than the rest, something that needs to be celebrated and admired in a different way. Because vinyl is more expensive and because it is such a more intentional media than digital forms, I am reserving LP buys for special items. I'd like to go through a few of these here. I don't know that this will become a regular thing on my blog, but who knows what the future holds? In the meantime, I need to briefly share three albums that I found "worthy" of buying on vinyl. 

Skáphe³ 

First up is the last one I bought, chronologically, Skáphe's third album, cleverly titled Skáphe(cubed) (sorry, I can't get the typefont to work with superscripts). 

Now, my picture, taken in low light up in my writing area, does not do the cover justice. It is a brilliant red cover, absolutely striking. If I didn't think it would scare my grandchildren, I'd put it on the wall as the cover art (by artist Karmazid) is stunning. To further cement that fact, here is the back cover:

But what about the music? Last night, I hearkened back to my childhood and listened. Just sat and listened with no distractions. I wasn't reading or writing or eating while I listened, I gave it 100% of my full attention. 

Of course, I had listened to the album digitally before I bought the analog version. Now, I am not normally one to like a whole lot of "Black Metal" or "Death Metal". For me, I can only take them in small doses. But I continue to search and sometimes find something I really, really like, something compellingly different than the others in these sub-genres. I'm open to have my mind blown by something out of the ordinary, something spectacular, and here I found it!

With raw, staccato drumming and vocals that blur the borders, such as they are, between Black Metal and Doom Metal (which I listen to quite a bit), this album rides in a liminal space that is rarely visited. The long slow glissando of harmonic guitar notes over pulsating drums and fairly complex rhythmic forms give a psychedelic edge to the songs, but do not slip into the realm of the quaint psychedelia that is ubiquitous in the metal scene. This retains a razor-sharp edge because of its uncompromising production values. Even short "melodic" episodes are loden with anguish, which explodes into outright howling despair. The contrast takes the music out of the muddy depths of much of today's Black Metal and transforms it into something like a dark ritual ecstasy. It's easy to lose yourself in the whirling abyss with this as your soundtrack.

Ur Törnedjupen and Nattslingor

Next up is a pair of albums by Death Metalist Wagner Ӧdegård, except neither of these are Death Metal albums. In a move reminiscent of Bohren & der Club of Gore, a German death metal outfit that turned to extreme downtempo "doom jazz", Ӧdegård here goes in a completely different direction. These are the sort of albums that would drive record store owners absolutely crazy because they don't fit into any neatly-marketable categories. Now, I have a special place for that sort of media (especially when it comes to books) as it is, again, in those liminal spaces where I find some of the greatest works of art, literary or aural.

 Ur Törnedjupen is evocative of a soundtrack to a lost folk horror film, newly re-discovered in some dusty archive in the basement of an obscure university library, which has been lurking in the stacks for decades, yearning to be found by some hapless student whose curiosity is about to unleash something sinister on the world. The instruments listed for this album are pump organ, accordion, Arturia Minibrute, voice samples and "lots of vinyl noise". The sheer atmosphere on this album is suffocating. But my words can't do it justice. It really has to be heard to be understood. Though I was careful not to let my visual focus wander to the art, book covers, and ephemera that fill my writing area, I had the films Begotten, The Seventh Seal, and particularly Nosferatu kicking around in my skull as I listened. The music has a sort of dreamlike ambiguity, for lack of a better term, that is unsettling. However, the closest analog to the mood I feel when listening to this is that which I feel when watching much of the work of The Brothers Quay (who are, incidentally, my favorite directors). The occasional admixture of vocals that mimic a muted and slightly twisted Gregorian chant give a pseudo-religious - or perhaps blasphemous - tone to the whole.

Nattslingor continues in the same vein, but with more of a Russian sepia-tone silent movie than black-and-white horror vibe. The instrumentation is nearly the same, but the first part of the record feels more documentary than artsy, if that makes any sense at all. 

Still, these albums are definitely cut from the same cloth and should be listened to in rapid succession, in an endless loop, if you can somehow manage it. This is an aural vortex you need to give yourself up to. To help that, the effect of the circular paper label on the center of the vinyl itself absolutely mesmerizes as it spins. Movement manifests as the silhouette of a devil "pulling" an Elder Furthark "*Ansuz" rune in a never-ending circle, lending a hint of something sinister which blooms into full-flowered demonic and ghastly mode on side B. My only regret is that it doesn't spin widdershins. But your brain will, believe me: it will!

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