ULVER, VIRUS AND ZWEIZZ
LONDON KOKO 22/03/11
This was a date not to be missed as it was the first and possibly the only time ever that Virus will have played live, needless to say that people from places like Spain and Greece had made the trip over to catch the show. Walking into the austere venue there was some powerful instrumental and futuristic music coming out the PA. I took a guess at Tangerine Dream, Vangelis or Jarre, it was not Goblin but whatever it was it set the mood and sounded excellent.
First up came an unassuming bearded guy who went over to a bank of electronic equipment and gave us a lesson in modular sound contortion. The guy in question was one Svein Egil Hatlevik a member of the legendary avant weird band Fleurety as well as Dodheimsgard. This was his solo project under the name of Zweizz and was an entirely different form of listening experience. Noise in form of electronic beats, pulses, wooshes and bowel churning frequencies rumbled out the speakers with a really beefy feel about them. Not much to look at really apart from a guy twiddling his knobs so photo taken for posterity I backed off near to a speaker and let the noise rattle around the loose change in my pockets, riding the frequencies like a sonic surfer hitting the big waves. Was it high artistic expression, or simply pretentious, was there a track listing, don’t be daft? Perhaps it was the work of someone who spent far too much of their youth watching Dr Who and Star Trek, it was music Jim, but not as we know it! Speaking of daft I had not noticed there was a toilet on stage till the audio mangler opened the lid, stuck his head down it and started screaming. I was not expecting that and have seen some odd things in my time but that was up there with the oddest. I could not say I enjoyed or disliked this 20 minute or so display and will state that I would much rather have seen Fleurety but you can’t have everything and there were legends from the same breeding ground up next.
Hobbling on stage with crutches and taking a seat near the front of the stage came Carl-Michael Eide or Czral as he was known in other bands. He has played with some of the greats and his well documented hotel window tumble was the reason for his incapacity. I had managed to see him come onto rapturous applause and sing a song with Aura Noir last year at Party San but tonight it was all about Virus who were the closest any of us were ever going to get to see the similarly highly regarded Ved Buens Ende, the ashes of whom the band rose from. There was a lot of cheering and the crowd were grinned at, asked to keep calm as the band got into gear to play for the first time ever. It instantly sounded fantastic as the leaden bass groove rumbled and rolled forth and that instantly chilling vocal refrain captivated us all. I guess I was particularly lucky as have already digested new album ‘The Agent That Shapes The Desert’ and was really spellbound by numbers such as ‘Chromium Sun’ and ‘Continental Drift.’ The group quickly got to grips with things and seemingly became more confident as they saw that the crowd were really into them. The music twisted and turned, full of sweeping nuances that were totally beguiling. A more recognisable number to most ‘The Black Flux’ got a big applause, the flow of it taking on a muscular workout and springing and uncoiling around the instrumentation.
Taking a walk towards the bar I was struck how fantastic things sounded throughout the auditorium. The music had a long way to go both up and back and it was doing so with brilliant clarity, every note replicated and standing out. Acoustically I do not think tonight’s show could have been better placed even if it was some way off being full to capacity. We were warned about aeroplanes as ‘Stalkers Of The Drift’ was introduced and this particular number really went for it, getting its groove on and encouraging movement from the audience. There may have been the odd person like myself hoping for a Ved Buens classic but it was not to be; still early Virus song ‘Carheart’ got an airing kind of bridging the gap from one band to the other. Finally ‘Lost Peacocks’ shook their plumage and that was that. If you were not there you may have blown your only chance to ever see the band but they seemed very happy and encouraged, so fingers crossed they will decide to play again in the future and entertain other audiences with their quirky avant-garde rock.
Ulver are a law unto themselves, they formed in 1993 and regularly changed musical mindsets, refusing to play live until 2009. Since then this is the third time they have played the UK and the third time I had seen them, missing one of these dates but catching them at Hellfest. I admit not being that impressed, or even particularly awake the last couple of performances and hoped this was going to change tonight as I have all their albums and a lot of respect for the group's warped genius. In the photo pit I wondered what the piece of paper was on the ground as I recognised none of the names on it, had it been left over from an earlier show? Taking photos I had no chance to concentrate on the actual music but did not recognise it. Most of the players were plugged into various laptops and components, Kristopher Rig occasionally grabbing the microphone to harmonise and giving us the perfect view of his elbows. I am pretty sure it was newest addition to the group Daniel O’Sullivan playing to the right of the stage and others were right towards the back. There was nothing in the way of limelight grabbing from this lot that’s for sure. Others I spoke to thought they recognised bits of the music but I was not convinced and thought they were playing a lot of new stuff. Indeed before the encore we were informed that they had in fact played the entire new album ‘War of the Roses’ which nobody had heard; way to take a risk and please your audience.
Still it was both very interesting and a visual display that kept us entertained. Even more curiously they do not appear to have played the album in the order it is track-listed. I left the photo area in a long patch of electronic instrumental music that was not at all dissimilar to what I had heard walking in the venue, indeed it may have been that track and again I really loved what I heard. A song with lyrics about the “sins of my father” had the vocals ever more prolific and they, as did the overall musical overtures of the night, sounded fantastic. Eerie sounds billowed out along with puffs of smoke rising on the back projector like the plumes of the caterpillar’s hookah in Alice in Wonderland. There was a distinct jazzy feel to the instrumentation. A clarinet then was added to the textures and was prolific to the rest of the performance. The music was at times soulful and even poppy, it seemed to have a lot more to it than more recent albums like ‘Shadows Of The Sun.’ There were also trippy parts and we spaced out watching bubbles rise from the screen and a xylophone was tinkled with. It was odd watching it all with others. In a way I felt I would have been more comfortable listening at home alone, perhaps this is the dilemma with Ulver and why they didn’t play live for so long. Going into what I could only call Kraut rock territory for a while then the last number ‘Stone Angels’ was introduced and really sounded grand. I loved the imagery as angels formed on the white screen and laughed as I had been blaming others for watching Dr Who before but could not help thinking of it here myself too.
So Ulver did things on their own terms, did it work? Yes and no, we were in a very privileged position to hear this brand new material like this and it must have made everyone here want to get the new album when it comes out but a few classics would have no doubt won us over. We did get one as an encore and again in Ulver’s obtuse fashion it was an instrumental, that aside ‘Perdition City’ number ‘Hallways Of Always’ bristled with static almost making our hair stand on end and sounded fantastic. Finally the players came back on stage bowing before us and the house lights came on. Ulver are a band who will always keep us guessing and tonight illustrated this in spades, what next from the tricksters? War Of The Roses beckons.
Pete Woods
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