Horizontal / Vertical
Basic InformationFormat: 7" Tracklist:
A: Horizontal |
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[ FURTHER INFORMATION ] [ REVIEWS ] [ ARVOSTELUJA ]
Hourglass Drops / FeelScape
"This time we have a review of a 7" vinyl for you. To be more specific about the Finnish lady called "Ovro".
First of all the cover art is really nice, on one side it says "ovro horizontal" and has pieces of Finnish newspaper on it. The other side has "ovro vertical" written on it and pieces of photo film with black paint. This makes the covers really unique and on a white background it simply looks good.
Inside is a white thick paper card with the track titles and further info.
All the sounds are fully collected and produced by Ovro. The vinyl itself looks really beautiful too, white vinyl with a red paper round in the middle with the drone records logo. For the people that take a closer look at things there is a funny thing to be discovered about this vinyl.
Inscribed in the vinyl itself are the track titles written. Only instead of "horizontal\vertical" there is written: "Undergrounded / Elevatored"
The two tracks on this 7" are also very enjoyable and quiet strange. There are LOTS of all kinds of sounds to be heard.
Side A starts with slow dark drone sounds with some interesting samples, it reminds me of some kind of alien beings shifting through time and between buildings. Then there is a short coming of what seems synthesizer sounds, which goes away again as fast as it came. there are very obscure voices hear able which seem to go back in time and suddenly vanish in air like there was nothing at all in the first place. There are pianos played backwards and the deep drone sound seems to guide everything to back where it all once came from. Distortions, hissing sounds, everything start to blend more and more. The force gets more powerful and stronger and there are scratches to be heard aswel. The sounds blend into a slow, obscure backward beat.
There are lots of weird sounds and the force gets stronger when the beat stops. Until everything just goes away back to where it came from.
Side B starts with the same kind of strange feeling and the same weird sounds heard on the other side. The deep drone sound is also the same. The force is not gone at all but seems to be ever as strong as before. Deep deep drone, strange alien sounds.The force gets suddenly incredibly strong, or is it just ourselves that get sucked more deeper into it. There are screetches, and it seems like there are doors opening and closing and motors starting and stopping. push the button.
Slamming doors distorted through time and shifting realities. Its like walking through a door and ending up in the same room again over and over again. Watch out the force can get violent sometimes. Suddenly there seems to be a river of data, everything from the cosmos erasing itself, everything what has been known vanishing, yet there comes a train, roaring and thundering over the tracks that will lead you to the end of the world..until there is nothing left.
This is a true remarkable listening experience and highly recommended for anyone that likes weirdness and originality.
Somehow this reminds me of the movie called "re-cycle" which i had seen lately.
FeelScape factor: 8/10
Artwork 7/10
Music 8/10
Overall rating: 8/10"
Lysander / Heathen Harvest
" They must have a great time over at Drone Records. Not only do they get to sign some - I'll be honest - quite decent drone and dark ambient bands, but then they get the lustrous opportunity of writing product descriptions and sending them out to reviewers. It seems that the synonym factory has been on overdrive at Drone and this 7" [technically, it came to me as a CDR] should apparently not be filed under dark ambient, experimental or even glitch, but "subconscious travel drones". I, for one, know that this is extremely useful for a magazine like Heathen Harvest who, when overloaded with gluts of promos and demos, tearing their collective hair out about where the hell to file the next obscure release from an underground label, will be beset with glee at being able to go right to their famished "travel drone/subconscious" pigeonhole and bung the thing in there for the next eager reviewer. I managed to get to the front of the line with this one, but that's only because I camped for two successive nights and bribed the admin with promises of Fornicator and Waco Jesus first editions.
Ovro's Horizontal/Vertical is limited to a pressing of just 300, which is a shame because it sounds like rather a nice package. Obviously they're trying to keep them aside for the purchasers only so I didn't get to see they physical packing. According to sources in and around the Ovro website, the disc comes as white vinyl with handmade covers pasted with newspaper sheets and filmstrips - sounds novel indeed - and it's good to see another label recognising the importance of physical presentation when it comes to marketing a release. Aurally, Ovro's music falls somewhere between dark ambient music and experimental glitch, mixing drones and ambient washes with various samples. The music tends to favour the dark ambient genre more than any other, but giving it a fresher tinge than most of the dime-of-the-dozen ambient projects that come out of Scandinavia. Ovro has been hailed as 'the wonder-girl of Finnish experimental music', an epithet which seems to get banded about a lot but which doesn't really mean anything. It would have been far more useful to call her "the innovator of pioneering entrepreneurial dark ambient" or something like that. Work with me here.
Ovro's compositions are quite clearly multi-layered. "Horizontal" comprises of pulsating, washing drones brushes, punctuated by the short slap of sampled bass strings. It has a very straightforward, linear feeling of movement inside a massive, enveloping space. "Vertical" has a far more direct approach to it, generating an atmosphere of being trapped or lost inside an abandoned factory with machines and automatons clicking away close by. Ovro uses much more obvious samples here from computerised clicks and glitches to doors opening and closing somewhere in the background. In both tracks she's careful not to bog down and sully the ambience with too much sampling, knowing when to segregate the aural sections and make them active and when to include long, pleasing sections of enigmatic ambience, leaving us desperately guessing where we'll be taken next.
At only 12 minutes it's easy to be slightly disillusioned by Horizontal/Vertical's short length, but this is exactly the reason why listeners should keep coming back to it repeatedly. I don't know about you, but more than once have I got fed up and drenched with boredom at prolix, self-indulgent ambient albums that drawl on and on for over an hour. Horizontal/Vertical is a perfect package of something relievingly different and its layers will unravel themselves exponentially the more time you give to it. With an impressive back catalogue spanning six years it's good to see an ambient artist who can put out mature, fresh and modest releases, and this EP is no exception. "
RAF / Kulturterrorismus
Willkommen im zugigen Labyrinth!
Vö: 2008 Label: Drone Records
Genre: Dark Ambient, Drone, Feldaufnahmen
Wenn eine Serie seit Jahren für Begeisterung sorgt, dann die 7inch Reihe des Bremer Labels Drone Records, welche verschiedensten Künstlern aus unterschiedlichsten Genres, aber mit einer Gemeinsamkeit, den gedehnten Strukturen (Drones), Heimat bietet, welche diesmal der finnischen Protagonistin Ovro zur Verfügung steht, die für "Horizontal / Vertical" unzählige Feldaufnahmen verknüpfte.
Wie alle Veröffentlichungen der 7inch Folge auf Drone Records, erschien "Horizontal / Vertical" in einer Auflage von 300 Exemplaren, die in weißem Vinyl (+ rotem Label) & einer handgefertigten Verpackung Auslieferung finden.
Als Inhalt dieses Oeuvres muss die experimentelle Tonkunst gesehen werden, welche beim Konsum Spuren bzw. Wirkungen hinterlässt, die unterschiedlichste Gefühle auslösen oder für ein spannendes Kopfkino sorgen. Gerade Freunde von unendlichen Labyrinthen sollten Ovro im Allgemeinen und die B-Seite von "Horizontal / Vertical" im Speziellen antesten.
Musikalisch erlebt der interessierte Hörerkreis auf "Horizontal / Vertical" Dark Ambient, den die Finnin aus einer enormen Menge von verfremdeten Feldaufnahmen zusammenschraubte, die sie im Winter 2006 in Helsinki aufnahm. Zur minimalen Akzentuierung streute die Dame eine schmale Gitarrenlinie und ein paar mysteriöse Sequenzen ein, die der Gesamtheit den letzten Kick verleihen. Besonders Atmosphärenliebhaber müssen diese zwei hier zu vernehmenden Tondokumente für sich entdecken, welche beklemmende Situationen in verwegenen Orten mittels Musik beschreiben wie transportieren – Wahnsinn!
Fazit:
Individuen, die eine passende Untermalung für einen zugigen Gewölbekelleraufenthalt suchen, sollten sich diese eindrucksvolle Vorstellung "Horizontal / Vertical" von Ovro zulegen, welche besonders durch ihre Ausdruckskraft besticht – meine absolute Empfehlung, auch wenn das Releasedatum schon einige Zeit zurückliegt!