ylävinjetti

Mosaick the Serpent / Vipera Aurea

Basic Information

Format: CD
Label: Some Place Else
cat.number: specd06038
released: 2006
playing time: 48 min.

Tracklist:

Mosaick the Serpent
1. Primogenitural Echoes
2. Second Momentum
3. Equation Impossible
4. Differentiation Irrevocable
5. Delusions of Grandeur
6. Statement of Inexistence
Vipera Aurea
11. Glossolalia
12. Scarlet Calls
13. Vorpal Angel
14. Mortal Strangers
15. Summoned I Summon
16. Freed Beast

 

Mosaick the Serpent - Vipera Aurea

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[ FURTHER INFORMATION ] [ LYRICS ] [ REVIEWS ] [ ARVOSTELUJA ]

Pekka PT in Hard and Osbcure #2:

"There are millions of details and the sound tapestry is so rich you just have to hear it to believe. Definitely not for background music as it's constantly demanding you to concentrate on the intriguing sound and also because it's just too disturbing for that.[..] As a whole unique, quite possibly a masterpiece, but I still need some more digesting to confirm that"

DP in Side-Line:

Ovro is probably one of the few female artists involved in the dark ambient and experimental scene. This 3rd full length is a kind of a "twins" double ep, but which can be linked to each other. "Mosaick the serpent" and "Vipera Aurea" each contain 6 tracks. The first ep is a pure soundscape experience where Ovro invites her listeners to enter a dark experimental universe. You get the impression to watch a movie without images while the spooky vocals of Ovro make it all quite anguishing. The tracks of the "Vipera Aurea"-ep perfectly goes on the same direction although these are a bit more minimal and into experimentation! Notice by the way that the album contains 2 separate covers. (DP:5/6)

Ikecht in Funprox.com:

Two EPs by Ovro printed on one CD, this is the latest offering from the Finnish Some Place Else label. Both EPs count six tracks, and on the disc they are divided by four very short blank tracks, making Mosaick The Serpent fill track 1 to 6, and Vipera Aurea track 11 to 16. Special in this case is that the disc comes with booklets for both EPs. And both booklets look very good, and are informative as well.

But the music of course is what it is all about. Mosaick The Serpent basicly is a quite subtle dark-ambient record. Spoken word that at times comes close to singing. Themes that are well thought out and done, especially in combination with the explanation in the booklet. Tension that gets a hold of the listener and does not let go. Special song on this first ep is "Delusions Of Grandeur", it is harder, more industrial and very good indeed, reminding me of Coil.

After a short silence then, Vipera Aurea starts. An ep that is quite different from Mosaick The Serpent. More industrial-feel to it, more experimental and more live-feel. Ovro proofs that she also knows how to work this music. Again tension hardly ever breaks, the listener just is lead through nightmares. Special mention on this ep is there for "Mortal Strangers", a track that harbours it all... beat-like sounds, rumbles, iron-scrapings, bells, a big bang, but also a piece of rest.

A very fine release this is, two ep's that are clearly distinct, but somehow do fit together. Ovro proofs herself in different kinds of music, and the looks of this release are very fine as well. Recommended listening.

NICK in Brutal Resonance:

"Fascinating! After two well received EPs recorded with Niko Skorpio under the moniker of Haeretici 7o74, Finland's Ovro records her second full length album (double album in fact), on the increasingly popular Some Place Else.

Ovro is a Female artist, doing experimental, psychological and cryptic ambient electronica. That alone is a rarity, as only a handful of female artists can say the same.(Gydja, of "Clear Stream Temple" springs to mind).

For someone relatively new to electronic music to work with an Icon such as Niko Skorpio is respectable to begin with. Not only is Niko a legend to Finnish Electronica, he also helped to found the Doom Metal genre, being a member of the project Thergothon.

This makes him alone the second most important man in Finnish Music, after Mikko Aspa (Clandestine Blaze, Grunt, Nicole 12, Alchemy of the 20th Century, Stabat Mater, to name but a few).

Enough to give anyone food for thought, and Ovro does exactly that. Not content with just releasing original and inspiring music, she pours her heart into her packages, surrounding all of her songs with her own creations of artwork, liner notes, and lyrical anomalies.

This is a twinned double album, with the theme of Serpents not only echoing the disc titles, but dominating the entire package. One of the pieces of artwork has a similarity to the six Chakras, and the Kundalini, which as most of you know is depicted as a Coiled Serpent.

Lets go to the first half of the release, Mosaick the Serpent. Elongated and Inspired song titles such as Primogenitural Echoes and Differentiation Irrevocable do little to take the veil of mystery away, and when one opens the liner notes to find litanies such as "White Dog, Blackened South, Millions dead to reason. Burning but not sign from God, Thinking the new Treason", it becomes crystal clear that we are not to expect anything even close to conventional.

Ovro prides herself on originality, and the album delivers that. The first track offers us brooding ambience, with the kind of eerie whistles you only hear from wind sweeping through tin tunnels. A very bizarre and horrific sound hits us at the end before the now obligatory sample of some speech recording or another.

Ovro is not afraid to use vocals either, and it is so pleasing to hear Female vocals in this kind of music. Special mention to Equation Impossible for a new lesson in bleak.

After the first six tracks (and the respective end of Mosaick the Serpent), we are offered four nameless, 3 second long "interludes", which I won't comment on.

How does Vipera Aurea expect to possibly compare to such a length of madness? The quote from Lewis Carroll's legendary "Jabberwocky" answers that. Vorpal Angel - best song title ever. But let's go to Scarlet Calls first. Intimidating, female dominance at its strongest. A Male voice singing, very slowly (almost choral like) "Relax Baby, it will only hurt a little" over, and over again. Not one to play at a family gathering then. Pure electronic chaos, and almost noise, in the sense of there being just a montage of sound and samples. So back to Vorpal Angel. THIS is what I call electronic! Incredible sounds!

This review as it stands, only describing a handful of the sixteen tracks, tells you all you need to know. I assume you're on the site already ordering this. If you're not, I suggest you do so. The label site is above.

Ovro, I love you. I am on your myspace page, come say hi sometime!

Freaks, BUY this. Fans of dance-worthy, regulated electronic, stay away."

keef innan in Judas Kiss:

"Whoever thought that women only make sweet and non-challenging music should think again. Ovro takes you into the depth of emotional disaster and makes it sound like the soundtrack of a bleak hell.

The experience becomes truly haunting once the vocals set in, at times startling, at other times utterly ghostly and exceptionally frightening plus much more familiar sounding samples. The track fit together like jigsaw puzzle pieces or like a mosaic fragmented into not so easy to swallow sub tracks.

If there was such thing as measured and ambient detonations you would find that Ovro created it and the collection does not need the aid of undressed female curves to stand out!

If you like dark ambient, if you look for music that will scare you and make you want to curl up into a ball in the corner, if you sit on your own and in the dark then buy it.. Yes please!"

Losing Today:

"Ovro goes her way, straight on behalf for her (difficult) road. The new publication of the Finnish artist sees collected two EP: "Mosaic The Serpent", begun more than three years ago, is a true jump in the dark absolute of the tundra Arctic, between echoes of spectral voices and crepitii of vlves; "Vipera Aurea" is the cities' balance, where city is the post-manufacturer assumes all those connotes annihilating described in the works of the Throbbing Gristle of thirty years ago."

Filth Forge:

"The music of this Finnish outfit could be filed under ambient or minimal, since what we hear are mostly distant, low-keyed noises and sounds, blend together to create dark and disturbing sceneries. It could be the soundtrack to some modern Asian horror film, or field recordings done inside a strange infernal dimension. While "Mosaick The Serpent" would need you to turn up the volume or get your headphones to drown into the dense substrata of sounds and grasp the atmospheres Ovro tries to evoke, "Vipera Aurea" is a bit more human (or, should we say, inhuman) with various disturbing children and adult voices whispering, murmuring and singsonging, like in the frightening moments of "Scarlet Calls" and "Vorpal Angel". The music itself shows increased heaviness and aggression.

On the whole, this CD features some interesting dark atmospheres and ghostly effects, especially in the second part, while the rest is a bit too creepy and interlocutory to be appreciated outside the circle of experimental and dark ambient die-hard fans. It is to the latter that "Mosaick The Serpent / Vipera Aurea" will undoubtedly appeal."

Frans de Waard in Vital Weekly:

"Still, it's a pity that there is no such thing as a double sided CD (unlike the DVD), because it would solve the problem we have here with Ovro: she offers six tracks belonging to one album and then some silent tracks (convenient counting to start again at 11) and then another six tracks, forming another album. Which is nice of course if you pay full attention to your CD player, if not, you have a problem. Then it will appear to be just one album. Ovro started her career as one of the few female exponents of the microsound/glitch music, but throughout the few years being active inside experimental music, she developed her personal style. Sampling plays an important role, and the main instrument to sample is her voice. This she feeds through endless amount of sound effects and comes with a rather dark, atmospheric sound that is less ambient than before, certainly on Vipera Aurea where it reaches almost industrial like peaks. Fans of Coil should be definitely drawn into this".

Ergo in Gothtronic

"Ovro's latest release consists of two separate parts, which still are closely connected to each other. The first tones of "Mosaick the Serpent" were already made in 2003. It was supposed to be an EP release, but another one of Ovro's creations was released before this EP was finished. Meanwhile our Ovro started recording "Vipera Aurea" as well and pretty soon both creations appeared very much alike. So both were pressed on one disc.

Ovro is a beautiful young lady that has put spherical soundscapes on Mosaick the Serpent as well as on Vipera Aurea. A lot of dark humming and grunting with funny and disturbing voice samples and some high painful noises, all put together in songs that almost all last less than five minutes. Honestly, I don't hear very much difference between the six song of Mosaick and the tracks 11 till 16, which represent the Vipera-part. The only thing I could come up with is that the tracks of Vipera are somewhat more hectic and noisy. The first part is mainly build up by low and monotone base sounds and some disturbing texts and voices (listen for example to Equation Impossible, Differentiation Irrevocable and Statement of Inexistance). The last six tracks have more different musical layers and also more noise sounds."

Jiituomas in Kuolleen Musiikin Yhdistys

"This Ovro record contains two ep:s on a single disc, with four (almost) empty tracks separating them from one another. Also included are separate, stylish and visually appropriate covers for both. The two works are clearly different from one another in style and mood, and they play out as individual, complete works. Mosaick opens with Primogenitural Echoes, a quiet and slow song, that near its end gains great strength from Mockingwyrd's (who plays bass on a couple of other tracks as well) voice. Second Momentum is more noisy, but still slow, and dominated by a speech on demons/daemons intoned in Ovro's own child-woman voice. Equation Impossible (of which some may have heard a version called Dream on the brilliant Serpent Rite live album) in turn uses Niko Skorpio to state its "She never went to Paris?" text. Behind the vocals there are sporadically breaking crunch, bubbling and clangs. In all its minimalism, it is a very effective song.

Differentiation Irrevocable again returns to using the diversity of Ovro's own voice as the top layer. It feels nicely disturbed, as its lyrics about hanging are carried out in words that at times sound mean, at others child-like. Delusions of Grandeur is a short, pulsating instrumental work, almost as if hinting towards the second section through its use of noise and squeals. Mosaick ends with its finest track, a weirdly lyrical description of oblivion called Statement of Inexistance.

Vipera Aurea is clearly heavier, noisier and more booming than Mosaick. Glossolalia works on railway-station hall like speech noise (made by Ovro and Dave Bumford), and does it rather well. It functions as a nice lead towards the rest of the material. The charmingly unabashed Scarlet Calls, featuring the voice of Massimo (Black Sun Productions) in addition to Ovro's own, repeats the phrase "Relax baby. It will only hurt a little." as well as classical Ovro words. Behind the vocals whirls a great, clinical wall of sound. Vorpal Angel is like massy nursery rhymes on top of cracks, Mortal Strangers noise bursts and vocals modified beyond understandability. Vipera's best track, Summoned I Summon , is a ritual-like, slowly amplifying work, in which an annoying squeal creates a very powerful mood. The last song, Freed Beast, is a weird re-mixing of Original Dixieland Jazz Band's Tiger Rag. It is strange, yes, but does not fit well together with the rest of the material on the ep, especially because there is so much of the original structure left in it.

Despite the fact that both parts of the main disc are remarkably good Ovro-stuff (though not as great as Sepent Rite), the real gem of the pack is the Estraier-ep which was included in the pre-order version. It contains material from places ranging from Russia to Turku, recorded in the spring of 2006. It opens with the amazingly gorgeous, restrainedly beautiful ambient track Sideral. Conpulsions is a short piece made of cracks?, noises and clangs, Iconoduliclasm a floating soundscape with vocals like seagulls'. Repositions is rustling, backward sounds and clanging, but with neither walls of sound nor soundscape-feel, playing as hollow but hypnotic. Marqaha is a return to the ambient mood at the beginning, but in a somewhat more clinical style. Finally Altarai transforms the feel to warmth. It too is a more soundscape-like work, yet far softer than the preceding tracks. It is a very fine finish to the very fine disc.

This is a highly impressive whole - Estraier, especially, but the rest as well. So if Ovro's way of manipulating sounds into collages at all works for you, this is a mandatory purchase. "

Dutton Hauhart in Connexion Bizarre

"Combining two distinct EP's (a total of twelve actual tracks on a single disc, with nicely designed inserts for each), "Mosaick the Serpent / Vipera Aurea" is the latest output from Finnish dark ambient artist Ovro. Saturated with enigmatic and surreal soundscapes, the disc will likely appeal most to fans of the industrial wasteland aesthetic - it has the ability to simultaneously lull the senses and disturb the mind. Individual tracks blend together, creating a cumbersome entity of sound that rumbles, creaks and breathes over more than forty-five minutes of moody expression, from bathymetric "Mosaick the Serpent" to cacophonous "Vipera Aurea."

The disembodied voices and foreboding, sometimes malicious, lyrics often appear unsophisticated or puerile while, at the same moment, they nourish a discomforting atmosphere. "Second Momentum" asserts 'I am my own demon', while "Statement of Existence" threatens 'she's gonna fuck you up'. In a few cases, the looping vocal samples are obnoxious to the point of becoming unlistenable. "Scarlet Calls" is a prime example, though an exception when compared with the ominous and tactile collages that reverberate through the remainder of "Vipera Aurea." Despite its preferably fewer vocals, the latter half of the release lacks the absolute depth of bass so appealing in "Mosaick the Serpent."

Ovro relies heavily on samples and location recordings, tweaked and manipulated in turn to create disconcerting voices or sounds and an overbearing feeling of pressure and tension. It is as if the artist is exploring the immense and hostile boundary between two lithospheric plates, exhilarating in the unimaginable, crushing forces that exist there. "Mosaick the Serpent / Vipera Aurea" aspires to be the stuff of experimental nightmares, though it should be equated to the stuff one plays to actualize an intentional bad trip. Perhaps for some, differentiation between the two is a moot point. (5/10)"