Ov - The Moon Is Down (Jewelled Antler, 2006)

1 The Chambers Of The Hand (8:43)
2 Spiritual Magnetism (3:56)
3 The Earth Was Once A Giant Animal (3:08)
4 Song Inside The Bower (1:43)
5 The Moonlit Door (8:11)
6 The Moon Is Down (7:40)
7 Devoted Realms (8:51)

This is a monumental occasion, the return of Jewelled Antler, after a seriously lengthy hiatus. This is the first Jewelled Antler cd since the last Of record, The Quartz Pond, way back at the beginning of 2005. It also marks the debut of newly married duo Ov, which just so happens to be sound artist Loren Chasse (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Child Readers, Coelacanth, Of, etc.), and former aQer Christine Boepple (Whysp, Skygreen Leopards Skyband, Kyrgyz, etc.). You know that whole 'beautiful music together' thing, but wow is that the case with The Moon Is Down. The first two tracks are lengthy abstract soundscapes of bells and chimes and gongs and percussion. The amazing thing is that the final result doesn't necessarily sound all that percussive, instead Chasse and Boepple manage to smooth the sounds into a dreamy billowy fog, with tinkling bells, reverberating chimes, it's like floating through a slowed down sculpture garden, huge pieces of metal slowly swinging, and gently rubbing up against each other, sending soft ringing tones to float softly across the gauzy landscape like dry leaves on a summer breeze, underpinned by slow low end pulses, smears of glistening shimmer and a constellation of glimmering tinkles. There are lilting guitars too, but plucked and strummed so sparely, they almost just sound like more chimes.
The record shifts gears after that, drifting from one dreamlike sound to another, a rich and exotic tribal landscape, huge swells of crystalline fuzz beneath fluttering flute melodies, primitive shakers and hand drums, and what sounds like forest sounds, drifting in and out of the mix, a world of alien lullabies, super distorted melodies over warm warbling woodwinds and textural percussion that sounds more like the crinkle of plastic, a gentle stream of fuzzy organ, buzzing harmonica, plink plonk guitar melody, pocket full of coins jangle, all bathed in a soft focus shimmer and some Eno-esque melodic ambience constructed from a dense assemblage of notes and tones, rich and oversaturated with tonal color, delicate minimal guitar strum and a mesmerizingly reedy hypnotic high end flute melody hovering in the background.
The final track is mostly made up of field recordings when the pair were on a trip to Germany, they were strolling through the quiet streets when suddenly the town's church bells began ringing, more and more, from every direction, a glorious cacophony, here there is a brief interlude part way through, a wheezing organ breathing out a fuzzy melancholy melody, but it quickly drifts away, leaving the record to fade out with just the distant pealing of bells. Wow!
Packaged in a beautiful hand printed sleeve, a strange angular crystalscape on the front, a mysterious symbol on the back, each sleeve with a different color ink and different colored paper. Includes an insert with liner notes and an image of some mysterious multi horned instrument on the other. As with most things like this, SUPER LIMITED!!!
Aquarius Records

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OV - Noctilucent Valleys (Soft Abuse, 2007)

1 Arms Of The Mountain (2:13)
2 Spring Clock (5:03)
3 The Noctilucent Valley (3:37)
4 Bone Of The Bone Scholar / Moon Of The Moon Scholar (10:23)
5 Ghost Of The Future (4:59)
6 Centaur In Saturn (3:36)
7 Soul Of Swan (1:54)
8 The Noctilucent Cloud (8:03)
9 Canals (11:51)

Drones, lo fi, psych, free folk, etc, projet de Loren Chasse et Christine Boepple....

Ov is the collaborative project between Christine Boepple and Loren Chasse (a leading figure in Jewelled Antler groups like Thuja), and sees the duo taking on a kind of organic approach to soundscape abstraction. There's a genuine sense of magic to these recordings, which although steeped in a lo-fi haziness nonetheless manage to capture a real sense of compositional rigour and all-round thoroughness. 'Spring Clock' is the first track to really get the balance right between the degraded sound quality and the musical intricacy of the piece, and following on from there the album's title track features some of the most withdrawn, low-key vocals you're likely to hear on any record, while a corona of cymbal swell gives breadth to the otherwise rather small stereo field the album tends to occupy. The song itself is most clearly redolent of Charalambides at their very gentlest and is, frankly, incredibly beautiful. Taking a cue from Chasse's own field recordings album (The Air In The Sand) from a couple of years back 'Soul Of Swan' begins with a simply gorgeous watery ripple, making a bed for ancient-sounding guitar chimes. Even further removed from conventional song structuring are the droning bow strokes and sustained tones of 'Centaur In Saturn' and the closing driftscape, 'Canals', which over its 12-minutes incrementally converges on a bewitching sense of calm. Highly recommended.
Boomkat

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