Owl Splinters

Deaf Center's debut `Pale Ravine' is still one of my favourite albums, so having to wait 6 years for another album had better be worth the wait. Thankfully, i wasn't disappointed!

`Owl Splinters' continues Deaf Center's fascination with dark imagery and mysterious worlds of gloom and terror. This new album is actually far less musically daunting then its predecessor. `Owl Splinters' is a more refined beast, the production is simply superb. The sounds are sharper, there is more space for the music to breath, instrumentation is sparser. But this certainly doesn't diminish the power of the music, if anything it's even more oppressive. This album begs to be played loud.

`Divided' opens the album with a layered orchestral drone, twisted strings, building slowly with a backdrop of eerily distant choir vocals, abruptly ending in a mysterious shuddering bass which scares the hell out of you. Now that's how to start an album! `New beginning' pulses with scattered strings before a dense echoed piano midway through appears, seething in reverb.

The album's highlight is the epic `The day i would never have'. Flickering sounds from field recordings, reminiscent of Richard Skelton's fabulous `Landings' album, gentle raindrops on a gloomy wet landscape, droned strings slowly permeating through. A delicate piano motif holds everything together until the strings and the drone become heavier and louder, tumbling into each other forming a dense mass which suffocates everything. But just like a cloud, the mass of noise is gone, the peace returns, you can hear the rain and all manner of unknown noises reappearing before it all ceases. A breathtaking piece, beautifully constructed, epic and frightening in equal measure.

Deaf Center comprises of Norwegians Otto A. Totland (piano) and Erik K. Skodvin (cello). The sparse musical landscapes allow more of an emphasis on their individual skills and performances, either combining or fighting for our attention, or more frequently playing solo. Both `Time Spent' and `Fiction Dawn' are both fragile piano pieces, offering rays of light in an often dark terrain. `Animal Sacrifice' is a harrowing piece using bowed strings.

Deaf Center have added a delicacy and depth to their sound, more in tune with recent modern classical composers such as Olafur Arnalds, Keith Kenniff, Richard Skelton, and Murcof. `Pale Ravine' sounded claustrophobic, `Owl Splinters' feels more like a release, a new beginning.

An astonishing achievement and deeply moving, `Pale Ravine' may have defined Deaf Center but "Owl Splinters' could well be their masterpiece

This Norwegian duo makes ambient, moody, minimalist contemporary classical drone... I think. A fascinating look in to a dark, but calm world. One clichéd way I'd describe this is if 'Agaetis Byrjun' era Sigur Ros and Yann Tiersen got caught in a trans-dimensional vortex which took them to a parallel world, except all the living things that make them happy are either dead or in the process of being made dead through torture, and everything that they draw inspiration from has become an angry fearful entity... Glaciers littered with the carcasses of dead soldiers and extinct species of mammal... Aurora Borealis that gives you skin cancer.

A dusty and roomy piano is the main point of interest for these compositions. Beautiful and poignant melodies and passages communicate a scenario, and in most instances this beauty sadly bleeds out into a despairing ambience made up of various harmonics and tones. Occasionally, the tension piles up and the piano bleeds back into the ambience.

This music is perfect if you need a downer but you want to keep an element of control as your mood is brought into a stable condition. It's probably some of the most relaxing music I've ever heard, which makes me wonder what technology is taking place behind the ambience. It's a really full and lush production which cocoons my head, and lulls me into a drooling trance.

There are no vocals to speak of and because the music is so minimalist, it definitely adapts itself around whatever the listener is doing at the time and becomes a sort of personal soundtrack. This is because it is at no point invasive or offering anything which isn't vastly open to interpretation.

Sunn0))) would be another fair comparison. They clearly share a similar objective of forcing the listener into introverted dark perspectives, ultimately creating a very alien experience through a journey into your own subconscious fears and sadness's.

Of all the fantastic releases I've heard this year, this is one I sort of feel in my bones, that I'll be returning to a year, two years, ten years from now and it's going to grow to become something very special to me.

Haunting, sad, and lonely, with vast sounds and intimate moments in equal measure - a powerful and atmospheric journey. Highly recommended.