Messe I.x-vi.x

The music was commissioned last year by the Tromso Kulturhus (House of Culture) in Norway, in a cooperation with the Arctic Opera and Philharmonic Orchestra cultural institution. It was composed and first performed live by Ulver, alongside the Tromso Chamber Orchestra on September 21 2012. The band then took the recordings back to Oslo and spent winter and spring in post-production, honing the material for its studio-equivalent. The follow up to 2011's acclaimed Wars Of The Roses, Messe I.X-VI.X is a different entity; reverberating 2007's somber and solemn Shadows Of The Sun, with the band even going as far as to say it feels like a companion piece to it. The album also echoes the early electronic experiments of EPs Silence Teaches You How To Sing and Silencing The Singing, and is furthermore said to invoke the ghost of an abandoned Nattens madrigal renaissance-project.