Dret Skivor – 5th December 2025
Christopher Nosnibor
This last week or so has been good for noisy, weird, abstract, experimental stuff. It’s pure coincidence, but these things to very much arrive in waves. There’s no thyme nor reason to it: Some weeks I’ll find my inbox abrim with guttural metal – and I’m by no means complaining – but sometimes I will crave noise, and there is none. Not proper noise, anyway. That said, this isn’t abrasive, full-on noise, but a work of abstract ambience dominated by field recordings, mostly of birds and billowing winds.
The last klôvhôvve release, which came out in the spring of 2024, was recorded live in Nottingham just a few weeks previous, and similarly this one was recorded live in November of this year. That’s about all you’re likely to learn with a dret release, although the accompanying notes are generous in their praise to the album’s contributors: ‘Thanks go to the wonderful animals and nature of Hammarö whose sounds you can hear being manipulated by klôvhôvve’. This is laudable: we don’t thank or celebrate nature nearly enough. There are gulls aplenty here, among other creatures less obvious by their calls (at lest to me).
It begins with the rumble of thunder, and it grows closer and more menacing. And then comes the rain. I assume it’s the rain. I’ve heard enough of it in the last couple of months. It feels like it will never stop raining. Again. Öljud rumbles and creaks and billows: a lot of this sounds like heavy rain and high winds, conditions which simply make me want to hibernate rather than reconnect with nature. There are quack and quarks, and all kinds of trilling sounds. Nothing much happens – if anything, really. It doesn’t need to.
Is it ok to drift off to an ambient work? I would have to argue that when listening to a studio work that’s particularly tranquil, it’s a compliment rather than an insult. Öljud is subtle, rumbling. Not a lot happens, and what does happen takes place slowly. Very slowly.
AA
Aural Aggravation 