Search - Deaf Center :: Pale Ravine

Headphone Commute Review

Headphone Commute | 02/03/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Norwegian based, Erik Skodvin and Otto Totland produce a cinematic album as inspired by the "old silent 8mm film reels and historical architecture". Skvodin's releases should be familiar to you under his Svarte Greiner alias on Type Records, as well as Xhale and Solitaire Albread monikers with numerous releases on Miasmah. Totland has also contributed to Miasmah under Supine alias, and collaborated with Serein netlabel owner, Huw Roberts, as Nest. So it seems that the duo has their hands full, yet Deaf Center already scheduled a 7" in the pipeline for Type Records. Getting back to Pale Ravine - this is a true modern classical marvel, with slight undertones of ambient bliss; an album that excretes melancholy and drenches the soul in sadness; an acoustic phonography reserved for lazy Sunday afternoons, or early morning Saturdays. Either way, for either day, the world of Death Center is not unlike an archive of old and treasured films, left carelessly to age somewhere in the attic, only to be rediscovered once again... and celebrated once again. RIYL : Marsen Jules, Clickits, Goldmund, and Helios. Favorite tracks: White Lake, Thunder Night and The Clearing.

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Unique, mysterious, strange and lovely...

Sim Ulacrum | Fort Collins, CO | 10/27/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"A wonderment of atmospheric soundscapes and ethereal instrumentation perfectly coalesced makes this unique, ambient-inspired offering stand out immediately. While the music as a whole would loosely fall into the category of ambient, it is certainly not constrained whatsoever by a single style or methodology. In a way, each track is its own compositional masterpiece, sometimes flowing into the next, and other times providing contrast or almost abrupt transition into an entirely new dimension of mood and resonance. In some tracks, lovely piano riffs merge in and out with ebbing cello and acoustic bass. In others, amalgams of natural and synthetic sounds form strange but appealing accompaniments to ethereal instrumentations. The mood goes from light and uplifting to dark and slightly bizarre to dreamlike and continues to explore the entire spectrum. This is an album to be experienced."