After the critical acclaim of their Neon City EP, Pale Ravine is the long awaited full-length realization of Erik Skodvin and Otto Totlands musical ideals. Taking up where Neon City left off with its epic sound collages and textural soundscapes, Pale Ravine manages to provide a sound altogether more Lynchian and grimly cinematic. Using influences from further back in their lives, the two Norwegian musicians have looked deep into their own family histories to piece together a dusty and nostalgic epic.
Inspired by old silent 8mm film reels, the historical architecture around them and the call of the alluring Norwegian landscape, the duo set out armed with microphones to record whatever they could to capture these feelings. Sounds from battered old records, cash registers, broken machines and a half-dead piano were all blended into the mix to add a warm, homely depth to the recordings. These sounds are most evident in the track Loft, where knocks and wooden creaks give an almost claustrophobic feel to the music. Again on The Clearing a subtle field recording gives the track a rich and involving background and helps build up the mysterious aura before launching a skewed 1930s circus-waltz.
One of the most stand-out influences on Pale Ravine is theatre, or at least the romance of all things theatrical. Not so much theatre in all its pretentious excesses, but the childhood apprehensiveness and the sinister undercurrents. From the muffled ticket booth ambience of Lobby to the solemn dance of White Lake it all appears draped in thick billowing velvet. The dense narrative technique the duo employs is almost like a reverse to a silent film the soundtrack is provided to be accompanied by the imaginative visuals of the listener.
Pale Ravine is an album which again manages to blend elements of classical music with electronic music, yet there is something decidedly different which sets it apart from the competition. While there are elements that can be compared with contemporaries such as Max Richter, Marsen Jules or Ryan Teague Deaf Center is altogether more other-worldly, darker and ultimately very rewarding.
lay down my one. 'hush' said the angel then gone warming deep your cyclone's cold. Never mind what is right or wrong.
Close your eyes my love. 'truth' is 'what we passionetely want' baring deep a much wounded soul clarity lusts one's ethical fog.
Don't you force dreams of your thoughts please just dream of yout heart no martyrical end will conclude to a path and you know i will hold faith in your hands 'till death of your dreams is to turn me to sands
'hush'
------------------------------------ i couldn't sleep today and i wrote some kind of a lullaby... ------------------------------------
I guess it's far from once expected to breathe from heart and not deflect it 'till once the sun seems too deserted and light of us much too descented into fear
I am to feel and yet regret it for all i seek must be neglected 'till once the man seems too respected and bright in trance designs the circle of life
A humble bow to all creators now ship my vines into spectators. All that i am used to absorb the pain of being dry inside the rain.
-------------- yesterday's mood in lyrics today is another day... --------------
Hello Deaf Center. I uploaded another track from the album «Symbiosis of Contradictions». That small ambient song called “Weather in Numbers” is the soundtrack for the today’s sky outside my window. Just a weak sunshine behind the grey clouds. Hope you will like it! /Ivan
I mind the time of youth gone by inside our hearts laid down, behind each and every tide we treasure most. And fall it is what dress you white despite the wounds, distress and ruins we walk across your psyche's loss,
our lucid holes of absent gods and broken loves
I strugle inside the cage we might let stare inside to breach, then hide the truth that binds our longing hopes. And fall from grace as we fail to face our gone cold trace inside the mud of this world, so mad and so misplaced.
-------------------------- lyrics i wrote today --------------------------
hey guys, just have seen that you got our collaboration-track online. great! i haven't heard it since a while. i like your new track also! will there be a new album soon? all best from (at the moment) rome. matze
Dear Deaf, i know this may sound a bit foolish, but you are my favorites during the night... i adore Pale Ravine (absolutely every track is a trip). This is such a soulfood and inspiration-giving very visual music! and that is why i thank you so much. Good luck and no rush, best things takes landscapes of time.
