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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Knived to death..., 6 Jul 2008
Ambient music and drone have been taken so many places in the past ten years, this is definitely one of the best stop-offs.
Knive is a very very claustrophobic and atmospheric doom album in essence. Yet it's doom with the heavy metal element entirely stripped out of it. Imagine if bands like Khanate or Sunn O))) came from a classical rather than black metal background...
Svarte Greiner (aka Erik K. Skodvin) makes use of cello, field recordings, percussion, guitar and voice to fantastic effect. The dread, foreboding and imminent horror permeating from these collective sounds is tangible. It's definitely suitable as a really creepy horror fillm soundtrack. When listened to intently in the dark at a decent volume it's actually quite frightening. Cello weaves in and out of creepy scraped effects and the odd wash of reverb drenched vocal. Ostensibly, the tracks have no structure or obvious crescendo and are seemingly random but they're incredibly well put together and thought out to eek out your very nerve endings.
The first track is brilliant; a sparse rhythmic motif provides the backbone for the track whilst oscillating guitar, cello and subtle percussive effects trickle over the top. All whilst a lone crow calls every so often.
Ullsokk is also worth mentioning; it's by far the shortest track at 1min but it's definitely the most uncomfortable. A faint squeaking accompanies creepy pattering effects but they've been recorded and mixed in such a way it seems as though rats are scampering just behind your forehead, incredibly uncomfortable feeling!
It's a fantastic album and most definitely a very pleasant surprise for me at least. If very dark soundscapes are your cup of tea then scoop this one up immediately, some of the most transcendental music I've heard in a long time.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Acoustic Doom makes its debut, 30 Mar 2008
Svarte Greiner is the solo project of the Norwegian Erik Skodvin, one half of the post-classical, electro-acoustic Deaf Center. Not as soothing as Deaf Center, Svarte Greiner's music is disjunctive and intriguingly unsettling (also evident in the grammatical malapropism of the title), which the host label Type choose to describe as `acoustic doom'. This makes for a similar effect to Xela's The Dead Sea - providing a spooky soundtrack against which to imagine stories of horror, desolation and angst.
The instrumentation is subtle, consisting of little more than double bass, cello and soprano vocalisation, whilst the use of sound samples is profuse. Knive contains a wealth of sounds such as crackles reminiscent of a needle caught in the groove of an aged slice of vinyl, a crow cawing, strange creakings, singular pluckings, or an aggrieved woman moaning melodically in despair, often with ambient minor tones fluctuating underneath to give the tracks coherence and direction. Any semblance of percussive propulsion is typically avoided, making a rare appearance on the fantastic track `The Dining Table', in which a kind of off-kilter, funerary beat is despatched as if from a misdiagnosed corpse rapping upon their coffin. However, the beat is complex, as if multiplied and deliberately de-synchronised, creating a rhythm that remains somehow regular and resigned rather than desperate and insistent, making it all the more disconcertingly hypnotic.
This description may sound unappealing rather than intriguing, as if it were just a commissioned exercise in manipulating mood for a film soundtrack, but it really is a strangely compelling record that needs no visual narrative to justify it. The sound is distinctive and original, and moody and evocative as it may be, it isn't at all depressing, it just takes you to a different kind of mood-space. Skodvin seems to have even spawned a new musical movement, cultivating similar talent on his own Miasmah label. Already Elegi has produced Sistereis, which utilises sounds recorded from underwater ship-wreck dives. Acoustic doom is a new musical idiom within the burgeoning field of electro-acoustic production, and Svarte Greiner is probably the best place from which to commence an exploration.
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