Ulla is the new album by generative artist Tim Didymus and experimental musician Foster Neville who have brought their complimentary styles to bear on this release which draws inspiration from writer Alan Garner’s 1967 novel The Owl Service as well as the 12th-13th century Welsh prose stories of the Mabinogion. ‘Generative’ and ‘experimental’ may make some people apprehensive but this is a work of delicate balance and subtle beauty given that Didymus and Neville share “an interest in the more tuneful and focused side of ambient electronic music”. Their combined input shows that the sonic landscape is open to influence, surprise and chance.
“The owl pattern traced from a set of dinner plates (the album’s cover), a remote Welsh landscape, the boundaries between past and present blurring, teenage obsession and transformation, as well as the mystical elements which permeate Garner’s story, serve as the inspiration for these eleven electronic ambient tracks.”
There is great sensitivity in the execution of Ulla. The compositions may not conform to expected patterns but the sounds, whether they are organic or electronically created, are familiar: piano, bells, felt-hammered instruments (possibly a dulcimer) and strings all rotate, never settling but always reassuring. It also utilises field recordings and treated sounds, for example, ‘Goddess’, which has gentle bell sounds accompanied by the crackle of night and soft animal cries which often reverse and warp, or the flutter of wings on ‘Crafangau’, the crows on ‘Portent’ and even the clack of snooker balls on ‘Hidden’.
‘Hooks’ and ‘Away’ stood out for me with the former being a summer shower of hammered dulcimer that bounces along like big warm drops of rain, and the latter a softly buffeting collage of woodwind sounds that swarm backwards and forwards around lightly treated human voices and bird sound.
The word Ulla draws from old Norse “ugla” and old German uwila” with the modern “owl” derived from “howl”. This melding of the archaic with the modern; myths and legends with the contemporary works beautifully. Melancholy and wist may lurk in the corners but this bucolic haunting is mostly benign and the shifting sands of the music has a comforting warmth like gathering round the fire on a cold night.
Ulla is released through the Subexotic Label as a download or very limited vinyl edition: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram | Facebook
Tim Didymus: Facebook | Instagram
Review by Paul F Cook
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