New music from Norwegian experimentalists Ulver is always something to savour, and its diversity might surprise you. 2016’s cryptically-titled ATGCLVLSSCAP was mostly instrumental and partly-improvised, veering from ambient to intensely atmospheric post rock and back again. Their latest release is a quite different proposition, however.
The Assassination Of Julius Caesar channels progressive, pop and electronica influences to utterly glorious effect. Repeated listens variously bring to mind Pure Reason Revolution, Anathema, New Order, Propaganda, early Simple Minds and Massive Attack, amongst others (a list of musical reference points that will have a few Progarchy readers salivating, I’m sure).
It’s difficult to pick out highlights in an album of such consistently high quality, but right now I’m particularly enamoured by the expansive dark groove of Rolling Stone (at over 9 minutes, the album’s longest track), the elegant pop of Southern Gothic and the achingly beautiful chorus in Transverberation.
I’m calling it now. One of the best albums of 2017.
I will never know, I mean KNOW, what a lakou is, in the same way that a Haitian will. It is a backyard, a coming together, a process, a form, a spirit. It is a community and a memory of communities stretching back through time all the way to the only successful slave revolution in recorded history and beyond. A summation and a celebration. It’s also just a freakin’ party, where all the significance of what Lakou means ends up in the bottom of a bottle of rum.
