[Reviewed by: Iaha Crax]
Cyclic Law reveals to us a new finished project created by two individuals, Kaarna (involved with Tervahaat, Slave’s Mask) and Kivela. These vast stretching lands of Finland are an endless source of inspiration for ambient music artists. Some of them have found a common musical language to express a sense of solitude and alienation hardly experienced in other parts of the world. Likewise, Otavan Veret displays such an artistic denominator and embarks on a solemn and vibrant exploration of the feelings engendered by that enigmatic environment.
Their work exhibits 3 untitled musical tableaux, as if they have already allowed us to accept there is no point in taking any reference of whatsoever when listening to the album. Track I floats with great deference, palpably touching our hearing by faint drones and some scarce chords. So fragile and impersonal flows the music, that you remain unaware of the hinge it has unto you. The slow gripping of the northern lights, dim and perishing away along with the self, slowly turns the common matters the mind has been filled with during daytime into oblivion.
The second track takes the listener out of the former reverie and throws him into the middle of an enigmatic ritual. The absent-minded trip becomes a descent into the spectacular musical vision of Finnish nature. The military rhythm imposed by robust drums, together with a majestic sounding dark ambient march, transports us through these borderless lands. Viscid, dense drones begin to sustain the progression of the track, and from above sunny but still-frozen glimmers of liquid sound are reversed unto this impressionist panoply. Somewhere in time calmer sounds regain the battle, as if nature is enveloped in a dense mist, and a human voice utters the end of the journey.
Besides that incredible distracting vastness or magical lights and strange colors, the country of the thousand lakes may bewilder strangers with another ineffable feature that influences zones hidden far in the consciousness. Track III erupts suddenly in a linear hissing noise, only to repossess in no time a monotonous drone-pounding frequency. The spirit has been enraptured and has now become a medium for the unique and strangely comfortable alienation of the nature of the far North. This long, elapsing melody has a strange power to keep you close in a sort of trance-like state where the ‘other’ reality loses its foundation.
These musical extracts from the illusive concreteness of Finland’s landscapes will leave an ambiguous presence inside the brain. And it is certain that some at least desire to intensify this contact with the occasion of another record.
Otavan Veret – Otavan Veret
Cyclic Law, 64th Cycle
CD 2014
Santa Sangre 