DEAF CENTER - Pale Ravine

Norwegian duo made up of Erik Skodvin and Otto Totland, Deaf Center arrive at their official full-length debut, following up on the mini-album "Neon City", which had already marked them out as intriguing architects of a mysterious ambient strain, poised between gothic atmospheres, Nordic mysticism and a minimalism that might recall the "blue notebooks" of Max Richter or the "black book" of Sylvain Chauveau.

Released by the excellent Type – a label that, from its very first releases, has been setting high quality standards and a well-defined stylistic identity – "Pale Ravine" is a majestic fresco lasting fifty-three minutes, tracing out a kind of soundtrack for a horror film, through a skilful interweaving of dark-hued electronics over a substantially classical framework centred on strings and piano.

The narrative unity – of a cinematic or theatrical kind, precisely – is easily perceptible across the twelve pièces that make up the work, often tightly bound to one another, like a constant flow of murky waters rising into pitch-black tides through oppressive synthetic blankets, juxtaposed with anguished layers of string loops, field recordings and assorted sound fragments.

Ideally taking their cue from the likes of Harold Budd and Robert Rich, on “Pale Ravine” Deaf Center reassemble the pieces of a puzzle that, taken as a whole, resembles an ambient symphony in which acoustic and electronic elements fuse together through ever-new interlockings, carved out of thick atmospheric layers. The orchestra playing this symphony, however, is one of ghosts, following movements that are slow but inexorable, duly emphasized by the motions of cello or piano, which frequently surface, revealing the two Norwegian musicians' classical background and offering, on tracks such as “Thread” and “The Cleaning”, a romantic handhold in a dark sea — at times made placid by the finest saturations (“Loft”, “Lamp Mien”), but more often crossed by imposing synthetic currents that carry the mysticism of Dead Can Dance into dark-ambient territories not unfamiliar with noise-based tensions.

But what stands out most about this extremely intense debut is, on one hand, the extreme attention to detail, which produces a rich and remarkably dense sound, and on the other, the ease with which Skodvin and Totland throw a daring bridge between chamber classicism and murky post-industrial depths, managing to sketch the overall picture not only in an aesthetically admirable way but above all with such evocative power that the end result is both captivating and, for an album of this kind, relatively accessible. For this very reason, besides being a thoroughly accomplished work in its own right, “Pale Ravine” can rightfully aspire to the status of a cornerstone in the meeting of musical worlds, one that invites listeners to let themselves be swept up in mist, darkness and deep emotional currents.

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18/02/2011