WE'RE WOLVES: METAMORPHOSIS DRESSED IN BLACK

Lecture given at the Norwegian Festival of Literature
Lillehammer, Norway
May 30 2009

Cornelius Jakhelln

I shall speak as a musician speaks of other musicians: with envy. I can think of no greater compliment from one follower of Apollo's art to another, than this short statement, voiced with difficulty and easily misunderstood: I envy you. And that is my statement to Ulver, on this day of their first concert: I do envy you.

I was there when your first album appeared in 1994. And I am here when you give your first concert fifteen years later, in 2009.

I'm a musical infidel. I freely admit it. Everybody knows everything, it seems, except me. I may make your blood freeze by insisting on my own ignorance; however, I listen to Ulver as an insider with a distance, possibly as a related outsider.

As a peripheral member of the same music scene in which Ulver started their journey, that of Norwegian Black Metal (avantgarde or not), I share much of the same aesthetics and references as the wolves.

You know everything about this band. I have nothing to teach you.

Still, let me quote Didrik Søderlind's press release for Ulver's last album Shadows of the Sun, as he succinctly sums up the band's evolution:

"For even though it might be hard to believe it when you listen to the soft-spoken new album, Ulver were once a seminal black metal band. They even have the name (Ulver translates as "Wolves") and a trilogy of folklore-inspired metal to prove it.

But even in a scene that sent shockwaves around the world, Ulver were outsiders. While other black metallers were "slaves to the one with horns", Ulver were inspired by Thomas Kingo, a 17th century composer of psalms.

As the band matured, their influences became even more eclectic. Techno auteurs Autechre rubbed shoulders with visionary mystic William Blake. Ulver have released acoustic folk albums and instrumental techno records, raw metal and industrial soundscapes, and they have composed music for films."

Also, I asked Ulver member Jørn H. Sværen a few questions that came to me, such as "Who does what in the band?"; "How does the music come about?"; "Are you the ideologist of the band?"; "How long have you been working with Kris?"; "Do you see any deeper connection between your publishing houses England and H Press, and Ulver?" This is what he answered:

"It has been a conscious decision on our part, not dwelling on who's doing what in Ulver. It has resulted in quite a few speculations, that I'm playing drums for example, I can't play a note. But that is of less importance, Ulver is a state of mind in my view. I am not the ideologist in the group, if I were to pin it down then let's say Tore is the engineer, I am the puritan and Kris is the visionary. I met Kris in the late eighties or early nineties, I don't remember. Only that it was in a line outside a concert in Oslo, I think it must have been Morbid Angel. We hooked up and became friends, Kris is one of my closest now. I don't see H Press and England as connected with Ulver, but it all stems from the same source if you will. The books from England for example, they could be said to touch on the same truths that make up the core of Shadows, I think in both the lyrics and the music. The great and grand clichés. Kris and I write the lyrics together, and they naturally show the signs of our dispositions."

I have organised my lecture as a trip through the album Blood Inside, incidentally my favourite in the Ulver discography. More than pure analysis of the music, the talk will give you an insight into my personal Ulver phenomenology. I am

DRESSED IN BLACK

You shall know them by metamorphosis; "like hell we are, all dressed in black," they say.

These playful words remain unsaid: "We're wolves, were wolves, werewolves."

You shall know them by grandeur, percussive heartbeats insisting that time is alive in music; "Monumental or something?" they say

You shall know them by strings transposed and transported into the digital domain, plucking away on your nervous system, singing songs of death and subsequent rebirth: "We dug our own graves a long time ago".

Let me be a snotty, coke-snorting journalist for a second: "Dressed in Black" sounds like the Coldplay of black metal ... I am tempted to label it (tongue-in-cheek) Grand Nocturnal Pop, possibly Grand Rock of the Night ... with a piano passage at 6.20 mins that sounds a bit like a quote out of the Georges Bizet's opera Carmen?

Using music as a soundtrack to your own life is a worthy quality test: With "Dressed in Black" droning in my ears I run my normal route, mirroring much of Berlin, or European culture, modernity or even civilisation – I am no stranger to big words, and definitely find them appropriate here – I envy Ulver their musical expression, because its melancholy mirrors the greyness of my former GDR neighbourhood, my passing the bunker where Adolf Hitler shot himself on April 30th in 1945, then further on past the Holocaust memorial, an ominous mass of concrete blocks resembling anonymous graves, then head-on into the lush alleyways of Tiergarten, chasing the setting sun westwards. The low bpm of the music calms my pulse, sort of, and the ringing choirs and echoes beautifully capture the moment.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

You shall know them by ambition, by their scoring the resurgence of the Tower and the descent of God: "Blood of the God word, spoken in tongues ... That we may see the end of the Babel Tower," they say, voicing desires so far unspoken ... "Fucking heaven to kingdom come".

And that sentence has many meanings I will not count: Fucking heaven to kingdom come.

"For The Love of God" invites you into a Sigur Rós-like soundscape with droning bass sounds and eerie, child-like choirs ... and the insisting percussion on vintage-sounding skins makes me think of black big band-music from the 1970s ...

As "For the Love of God" enters my ears, I feel like a witness to the beauty of Spring in Berlin. I witness the world in passing, an experience of ephemeral beauty. The perception of beauty belongs to the traveler as much as to the sedentary. I long for

CHRISTMAS

You shall know them by perpetually being born, as an instance of God in Nature: "What is has neither come nor gone, but error moves," they say ... "Today we have changed eternities and what is past no novelty improves."

By the third song of Blood Inside, it is clear to me – as the last mind on the planet – that there is nothing left of the 1993-era Ulver. The orchestral dark rock herein belongs to a wholly other paradigm than that of black metal. The band's evolution from black metal to grand nocturnal pop can be understood thus: the grandeur of the former genre is also found within the latter. Grandeur: Vocal harmonies in several layers, string arrangments, huge percussion etc.

"Blind knowledge is working at useless ground, and crazy faith is living the dream of its liturgy," they say.

How can I speak of music when I ought to speak of God? Perhaps it is so, that by speaking of music one also speaks of God. The Christmas lyric is a poem by the Portugese poet Fernando Pessoa.

Let me quote the 27th proverb from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake: "The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man."

I run. Through the veil of green leaves I see the Berliner Philharmonie where Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Edvard Grieg and Johannes Brahms conducted their works. Wilhelm Furtwängler took over the leadership in 1923; Herbert von Karajan lead the orchestra from 1955 to 1989. I cannot stand the thought of living in a city devoid of an orchestra. However, I do have an orchestra ringing in my ears; they perform the track called

BLINDED BY BLOOD

You shall know them by words spoken from the past to the future, a lullaby from a father to his son: "You are from the heart of it all ... the light from the love of the night," they sing ... and tears appear in my eyes with these words: "Crying from the inside - the fear ... my little one ... From the Earth It all ends"

The song begins with the mild chiming of bells, then a Moby-like sample of a resounding, black voice singing gospel, then Dead Can Dance-atmospheres ... haunting and resolutely beautiful. Grand rock. Black Grand Piano – "piano" in its Italian sense, meaning also "quiet", "tranquil".

Run again, along, entlang der Tiergartenstrasse; when crossing the Hofjägerallee I look at the Siegessäule, that proud monument designed in 1864, after the Preussian victory over Denmark the same year. By the inauguration of the Victory Column on September 2nd 1873, Prussia had also defeated Austria in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) and France in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). We look at the Victory Column with the eyes of convinced pacifists.

Do you hear the drums and cries of ancient war?

IT IS NOT SOUND

You shall know them by slowliness, by the precise and deliberate exertion of violence upon your ears and the emotions induced by dark music. "For the record, No one will understand What it is all about," they say ...

Granted. Granted. Grand Nocturnal Pop. Grand Rock of the Night.

"The dead name ... Backwards ... Amen"

"Animals! Werewolves, once among the most influential of the black metal family, now stray, strange birds," their press release reads. "ULVER is 33 years and counting backwards. They have the whole future behind them."

You shall know them by pretending to be the inversion of Jesus, Christ, the Saviour: "It just happened a long time ago ... 33 years ... Again and again and again ... What is it all about ... It is a promise of a lifetime ... Never recorded".

Again and again I run. At the Spreeufer I see young girls pique-niquing with white wine; I see old people parading their Nordic Walking poles, and when crossing the Corneliusbrücke, the bridge over the Spree, something marvelously curious: Llamas. They are animals I can only describe as noble, alert and stoic; while this description rings of 19th-century anthropomorphism, I challenge you: Bring Ulver next time you are in Tiergarten and go see those wonderful animals in the Zoologischer Garten. Every time I pass them I feel that we share some sort of existential community. The music of Ulver – now in my ears – seems to encompass the animal realm as much as the architecture of the GDR, the Third Reich or the blooming trees of Tiergarten. For once, tell me

THE TRUTH

You shall know them by their vocal lies in the ruthless pursuit of musical truth, by their attempt at creating confusion: "It is the two," they sing, "They turn the pages of the same book ... It means nothing to them ... The pages turned by the one ... Is turned back by the other."

Ladies and gentlemen: IT IS THE TRUTH. The topic for this year's festival. Do you dare to speak the truth, and nothing but the truth?

They are not Ulver. They are David Irving.

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE QUEEN'S BENCH. Before:
The Hon. Mr. Justice Gray

B E T W E E N: DAVID JOHN CADWELL IRVING Claimant

-and-

PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED, 1st Defendant

DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT DIVISION, 2nd Defendant

XIII. Findings on Justification. Excerpt: The charges which I have found to be substantially true include the charges that Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.

They are not David Irving. They are Woody Allen.

(Two Woody quotes)
a. "On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily as lying down."

b. "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

You shall know them by their claim to that which once was known as True Norwegian Black Metal: "They know it by heart ... By the nothing inside it ..."

The song is a fine mess of insisting percussion and strings, choirs, trumpet samples and melancholy synth lines. Kris' layered vocals are mixed with funny cartoonish effects. It is the truth, curious and comical.

I continue my run past the llamas in Berlin and end up, mysteriously, on the shores of Norway, among the wooden houses of Haugesund. The salty seaside air awakens my brain, as I pass decaying Jugendstil villas, wharves, cross two huge bridges before ending up at the column dedicated to Harald Hårfagre ("Harald Fairhair", who after victory in the Battle of Hafrsfjord in the year 872 unified Norway into one kingdom.) From that magnificent viewpoint, standing on the Viking king's burial mound, next to the stone column placed on top of it, I look out on the North Sea, admiring the grey sheets of sea and sky merging in the horizon. I am all alone. I am with Ulver. Then two visitors. I talk to a black couple of engineers from North Carolina, who just moved to Haugesund to work in the oil industry. They seem to take pleasure in this bit of Viking sightseeing. An ambulance with wailing sirens pass. We are

IN THE RED

You shall know them by their travels into new domains of sounds and sense: "Out of nature ... Something bloody ... A body," they sing, with echoing strings mirroring the cold emptiness of hospital corridors. "Hospital doors open," they sing, "a great white".

The dire hospital song terminates in a jazz tune, with trumpets, clarinets and vibraphone engaging in merry big band battle. I would have loved to play this music to the young man you will see soon in a certain YouTube video clip ...

"Hey, dude ... are you stuck in 1993, or what? This is the music you will be playing in 2009, NOT the unholy Satanic fistfucking black metal (or whatever else it is) you believe that you will be playing in the future ..."

The future is now. I'm lovin' it.

From the Haraldshaugen monument I run further, as in an Olympic commercial from 1994, to the small Norwegian town of Lillehammer, located in Oppland with 25070 inhabitants counted in 2004. Although I, in theory at least, ought to be listening to the song "In the Red", all of a sudden I find myself speeding through the forest listening to Ulvers primitive black metal album from 1996, Nattens Madrigal, while running upwards along the waterfall called Himmelriksfossen. It is a splendid, sunny day in the end of May. Spring has finally come to Norway, and nature celebrates Winter's departure with a huge party of singing birds, budding trees and blooming flowers. As I make my way up the forest path, the noise of the waterfall merges with the blazing "Of Wolf and Fear", so that I can hardly distinguish the one from the other. I become aware of the deep similarities between those two sound sources, one a product of nature and the other a product of culture; The True Norwegian Black Metal can be compared to a waterfall, falling freely and unrestrained, out of necessity. The riffs are always played with open strings and at blazing speed, the drums a violent million litres of water coming at you blindly. The screams may be likened to the water of Himmelriksfossen crashing down on the stones below. The movement of TNBM shares its necessity with the waterfall; both are unavoidable forces behaving according to the law of gravity. Do not quote me on this.

On top of the waterfall. It now seems that I am out of breath and out of music. Hence, I will pause Blood Inside for now and parade the trivia machine instead, by recounting the number of names by which I know the chief wolf. In the first Ulver album, I knew him as Garm. In my unhappy days in Oslo (Ulver's Themes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven & Hell era), he went by the name Kris around town. By the release of Metamorphosis EP, I think it was, he started appearing as Trickster G. When he was kind of enough to lay down vocals for the Solefald track "Loki Trickster God", his email address was Storeulv, ("Big Wolf") and the sender name Christophorus. In Blood Inside and Shadows of the Sun his name is Kristoffer G. Rygg. Thus, His Holiness is known under a fine panoply of aliases.

In this piece of seemingly irrelevant trivia, I find a property essential to the Ulver identity: playfulness, the joy of appearing under different names and masks.

What is tried is not true, but trite.

However, contrast this with the following statement made by Kris to Norweigan newspaper Morgenbladet in 2008, after the release of Shadows of the Sun (my translation):

"There are many things about the music business that we are uncomfortable with. You have to play theatre, kind of, wear a mask and act in special ways in order to get media attention. We are not very skilled at this. Wearing some kind of public persona (or personality) is so unnatural, I cannot relate to it. In that respect, none of us in Ulver should have been musicians. We should have done something completely different. We are good only in one segment of doing music, namely doing music as such."

The last line ought to be quoted in Norwegian, as it translates only difficultly: "For det er bare ett segment av det å drive med musikk som vi gjør bra, og det er musikk i egenskap av musikk."

In conclusion, I would like to share the following with you:

    * an unforgettable interview with the young Kris (from 6.20 mins; the poor resolution may not be a disadvantage to both band and person)
    * the authorised "Dressed in Black" video

Thanks a True Norwegian Black Metal bunch!