Ulver — Teachings in Silence — released 03/2002

Teachings, in silence. The things that silence teaches? The silence that teaches? If you stay silent, which things will be taught, I mean, teached to you? Will you teach me how to stay silent? Huh? How to shut the fuck up? Thank you.

It might look like I’m having a mild manic episode, but that doesn’t matter, because now it’s time to check out Teachings in Silence, an album that’s actually two EPs in a trenchcoat. Ol’ Krissy, who has by now come up with yet another stupid alias, Trickster G. Rex, took their prior two short projects and released them as one thing. However, it’s pretty hard for me, both a priori and a posteriori, to not examine the two “halves” of this as separate things, so that’s what I will do.

First up is Silence Teaches You How to Sing, which consists of one 24-minute track with little to no regard as to structuring. Wikipedia tells me the two EPs as a whole are basically somewhat (?) organized recordings of G-Rex and Ylwizaker just fucking around in the studio with a sampler and some random stuff, which you can definitely tell: it’s a sequence of nigh-unrelated sections and loops. There are some great timbres and very sampleable loops here and there, but that’s about it. It all sounds like a sketch for something bigger, and I don’t know if they used any of the stuff in here for later projects, but as it stands, well, it kinda just does what it says in the tin: two goofy buddies going silly mode and whimsymaxxing in the studio.

DOES IT PULVERIZE? Eeh, not really tbh. In a somewhat roundabout and forced way it kind of does, at some points here and there, but that’s about it.

Next up, however, we have Silencing the Singing, the second “half” of this whole thing. It consists of three tracks, which all have some pretty sick titles tbh (Darling Didn’t We Kill You?, Speak Dead Speaker and Not Saved) and actually sound like proper finished music this time around. Timbres and loops are as cool as ever, with the added advantage of actual musical structuring. Guitarz make a triumphant retvrn in the hypnotic, soothing yet strangely haunting first track. Second and third are pronouncedly more ambient, with less variation and more textural exploration, which goes really well, and as a whole this EP manages to create a coherent and consistent but still inspired and surprising atmosphere, which is something these guys have proven themselves more than capable of in general. Something this kinda sounds like to me is, like, a soundtrack to one of those weird but surprisingly good homebrew RPG Maker games like Space Funeral or Void Pyramid.

All in all it sounds like they took the lessons they learned in the first EP’s general fuckingaroundery and actually applied toward making music, with more than satisfactory results. Listening to this immediatey gives me a strong urge to open FL Studio and make some music of my own, which is basically a guarantee that it left me with a strong impression and I’ll surely be coming back to it many times in the future.

DOES IT PULVERIZE? Pulverize it does.