Høst
Korstog
Isødet

This laconic ambient EP drifts a shade short of nineteen minutes amidst icy floes, sub-zero waters wherein the mind slips into a borderland betwixt life and death as the flesh chills so much that all pain dissipates and memory and reality blur. Hailing from Norway, Roy-Arne Knutsen delivers the imperceptible of isolated fjords whose vicinage is rarely touched by mortal hand or decried with eye, save for the lonely and hardy few that ruggedly survive such sparse climes. Knutsen draws upon this recollection as inspiration, his grandparents having lived in such a bourn that he spent time at during childhood.

The first track, 'Host', pulses like a submerged cry of a mechanical beacon where the ocean glissandos gently above lambently with its own melody ululating in the subtle currents and swells, mournful and oneiric. Continuing this theme of water, 'Korstog' laps, bumping against the wooden boat in the deep icy trenches walled in by white and shale speckled mountains. This second track generates more intimacy, more immediacy with the familiar palpitations of Mother Sea nudging the foreign presence of man; here the strings and choirs touch on this by reflecting dissonance to the samples of the wooden vessel. 'Isødet' ends this liquid journey, the song itself recorded some 6 years prior to the first two shows a more electronic flavour while immersing itself in the aquatic scarps of Norway. Here watery depths are plumbed, sounds oscillate and echo in surround sound, yet the mood retains similar caress, lonely and dream-like.

The album and cover art (featuring the blurred features of a photograph of an old boat house) can be downloaded in its entirety online from the Silence is Not Empty website [here], with all the mp3’s in high quality.

NYR