Landscapes

Ildjarn is probably one of the more mixed artists in the black metal genre. Forming in 1991, Vidar "Ildjarn" Våer wasn't afraid to experiment in the genre and do some unusual things in the genre. Whether it be in the raw black metal style or even the ambient stuff, Ildjarn is a band that you're either gonna love or hate. For me personally, I find his black metal stuff to be decent, but nothing too special. Where the band is best at, however, is in the ambient works, and probably one of the best examples for this will be in their second studio album "Landscapes".

With two discs that together last for over two hours, this album is gonna feel like a chore to get through, especially with its rather minimalistic style. For the majority of the record, the tracks are made up of a synth keyboard that plays a droning sound. This droning sound does play some different tune and melodies, but they are repeated throughout most of the tracks. Some tracks like the first one in disc one has a more dark atmosphere, whereas others like the sixth track in disc one are more melodic and angelic in nature. On paper, this sounds like an absolute boring album, and at first listen, I'll admit that I was kind of hoping for another instrument to pop up, which didn't. However, while these track might be lacking in technical composition, it's the atmosphere they bring in that make this album truly shine. The general atmosphere in disc one does get dark at times, but is overall atmospheric and even beautiful at times. As for disc two, there is a more serious vibe within the tracks, as it sounds a bit more deep and darker, but still as calming as the previous disc. It also includes more diverse sounds, such as in track nine with some wind playing in the background in the middle of the track. Disc two might be a bit better, but both of those disc do offer some simple, yet effective ambience.

"Landscapes" is easily one of the most basic and simplest ambient albums I've ever heard, and I won't really fault anyone who just can't get into this style at all. However, since my first visit on this album a while back, I do feel like it's very strong for what it's trying to do. It might not have the technical complexities or grand and vast atmospheres when compared to other ambient albums, but it's still just as great as them. If you're looking for some nice ambient music to play in the background, then you can't go wrong with this record.

99% of black metal musicians should not make ambient music, and I will die on that hill. With only a handful of exceptions, they just sound like half-hearted attempts to emulate established ambient artists like Brian Eno, Robert Rich, or Steve Roach. If you've so much as skimmed any of those artists, you'd agree. Instead, the black metal spergs will go to it after listening to the band's black metal material and think of this as some sort of kvlt approved glorification of nature. In reality, it's just fucking lazy.

I've already established my general opinion of Ildjarn. The original bedroom black metal musician making terrible music who gets lauded anyway for his "authenticity". This extends to his non-metal material including today's review subject Landscapes. Released sometime in 1996 alongside his second and third black metal albums Strength and Anger and Forest Poetry, it fits his persona of putting in minimal effort and making music what the uber snobs would call....well minimalist. This ain't unique and it ain't good.

Compositionally, Landscapes falls into a trap that other black metal ambient composers seem to like falling into. All the tracks are one dimensional loops of a single keyboard melody. It's no more than 5 notes per track, often no more than 4, with some reverb. And with all the tracks not having songs, they don't even have an identity to meaningfully distinguish them from one another. The compositional process couldn't be anything more than just picking a duration and roll some dice to determine which four notes on the keyboard get used. Given the way some of them sound, it might as well be just that. Some tracks don't even sound pleasant; they sound dissonant and bizarre. Not in a good way either that would imply it sounds remotely atmospherically eerie, but rather one that makes you wonder "why did he think this would sound good?".

And there's over two hours of this shit on this album! Don't go thinking this gets better as it goes on either with that length because everything on disc two follows the same formula on disc one. There's no musical evolution as it goes, no concept to follow, no story, no reason to listen all the way through. The only thing emotion that this evoked in me was the thought of "why the hell am I not listening to Structures from Silence instead?". Landscapes is not a novelty, it's a waste of time.

Firstly, this album is not for everyone. Landscapes come in well past the two-hour mark, making it seem like a considerable time investment. It's also totally composed of long, untitled tracks that all more or less sound the same. You can jump around on this album as much as you like, Ildjarn clearly picked a lane for this album and stuck to it throughout. Now with that out of the way, this album has without doubt found itself in my top 10 albums of all time. I love this album through and through and after some thought, I don't think I can give it less than a perfect score.

Landscapes's composition is nearly always just one, maybe two synth sounds at a time. There's no drums, no guitars and certainly no vocals. Landscapes is about as stripped down as an album can be. On top of that, it's mostly improvised. Those two factors give Landscapes this wonderful, flowing sound I've never heard done better. It's like the sound of your own thoughts; something totally stream of consciousness that constantly picks up and discards ideas like a living thing. It's utterly unique and after only a short while it totally envelopes you. This album is perfect to put on in the background while you relax or do other things, it's not something that's ever aiming for you to focus in on.

Landscapes is also very good at slowly pulling you into its thick atmosphere. I usually find myself putting it on and dreaming of grand adventures, fjords and beautiful landscapes while I focus most of my attention on something else like writing, doodling or getting on with work. Its helped me filter out distractions. There's lots of ambient/black metal albums out there that can do that but I've found nothing that does that better than Landscapes does. In that sense, it's very unique.

Another important aspect of Landscapes' sound is how unaggressive, warm and downright welcoming it comes off at times. I've heard this album compared to Filosofem but that album tended to lean more heavily into noise than this does, not to mention Filosofem is far colder sounding, like it wants to keep you at arms length whereas Landscapes seems far more willing to open up swallow you whole. Both are atmospheric but Landscapes never feels as static or repetitive as Filosofem does in places. Again, I think the improvised aspect of Landscapes stops it from ever feeling stale and help it glide along effortlessly. The warmth of this album also feels like a huge departure to most of the extreme metal coming out of Norway at the time, something I can't help but respect simply out of how against the grain it is.

The synth tones on this album are really well selected and perfectly utilised. Ildjarn clearly knew how to squeeze every last bit of synthy goodness out of whatever keyboard he used to record this and the result is some gorgeous synth tones. As I said before, this album has this wonderfully warm, airy vibe to it I can't get enough of and that's in large part down to Ildjarn's carefully curated collection of tones and settings. In conjunction with the album's loose song structure, the tracks on Landscapes seem to possess a depth you might not always expect from such limited instrumentation.

Lastly and most interestingly, I feel Landscapes is the most successful display of Ildjarn's outlook and ethos. I don't know the guy personally but from reading through old interviews, it's clear Ildjarn isn't the most social of people. Most of his music too clearly isn't made for a wide audience, through its sheer quality Ildjarn certainly has developed a cult following. Sometimes I wonder if this album is a distinct attempt to go just a little further, to make something only Ildjarn himself can ever really appreciate fully or reflect back on fondly. I know plenty of metalheads are into ambient music too but something about how stripped down yet warm and comforting Landscapes is makes me wonder if Ildjarn was deliberately trying to shake some people off by making such a dramatic change in his style. That's a pretentious as fuck reading of this album but I like how the album seems to welcome different interpretations. For an instrumental album, I think it has a lot to say.

Going into a little more detail from my last point, Landscapes is impenetrable in a way Ildjarn's black metal albums always fall just slightly short of for me. Don't get me wrong, Ildjarn's other albums are great but they're clearly something a "metal dude" is going to love, assuming they're fine with it sounding like it was recorded in an actual forest on a broken 4-track machine. You can't headbang or tap your foot or really do much of anything with Landscapes, not to mention it's difficult to get all the way through in one sitting and that's something clearly intentional on Ildjarn's part. Landscapes feels like true "outsider art" or at least an attempt to break the mould a little; it's not something you can really slap on a patch or chop up to put on a "greatest hits" release, though I'm sure both have happened at some point.

At the end of the day, Landscapes is still a packaged, for-sale product but it doesn't feel commercial or tacky, it certainly doesn't sound like something that was made to impress anyone, which was partly what black metal was all about, right? As you can see, this album gets me to think in a way few others can and I'm very appreciative to have found something that's helped me do that.

Fingers crossed my nerdy ramblings haven't made too many of you run for the hills before the end of this review. I didn't want to make this review ridiculously long because Landscapes is something that should be experienced (not just read about but I hope I've convinced at least a couple people to give it a try) but honestly, I've found it difficult to condense why I think this album is so good. It's not at all for everyone and there's no shame in saying "this sucks" but I've found far too much comfort and enjoyment out of Landscapes to try encouraging others to check it out.

Ildjarn’s music, whether it be the ambient variety found on Landscapes or the extremely raw minimal variety found on his black metal releases, tends to polarise opinions. But the stripped down, simple music in its most basic form that is found on Landscapes is likely to test even the most dedicated Ildjarn fan’s patience. If you are not a fan of minimal music in the extreme then you probably have no interest in Ildjarn at all and you may as well stop reading. Ildjarn’s brand of black metal became notorious because of the fact that it was so stripped down and so simple (even by black metal standards) coupled with all the usual hallmarks of black metal, extremely poor production and harsh vocals. A typical album would have upwards of twenty tracks, all around 2-3 minutes long, with little or no variation in tempo or rhythm. Riffs would be built out of two or three chords and one would rarely find more than two in one track. The beauty of this approach was that it showed music in its most pure form. The slightest change in key or dynamics would have the same effect as a glorious cadence played by a full orchestra working their way through the grandest of symphonies. It also came across as a parody of contemporary music itself, reflecting it back in an ugly, contorted way that made the attentive listener feel truly uncomfortable.

When one looks at the music in this light, the switch to making minimal ambient music seems like a logical one. Using simply synthesizers Ildjarn was able to strip yet more layers away from his music, missing out the middle men of drums, vocals and distortion.

So in theory this should have been a natural development for Ildjarn, taking his music into a new realm of possibility. The transition, as evidenced by Landscapes, was to prove anything but smooth however. The result is that Landscapes is more of a growing pains album rather than the shocking new direction. His black metal style has been slowed down to the point where the same musical content (two or three riffs made up of very simple chord transitions) that would normally last two minutes has been stretched out to last between eight or nine minutes. The result is ambient music in the extreme, being incredibly minimal and atmospheric with no discernable structure or direction. Atmosphere, unfortunately, may be the one thing that this album has going for it. Aside from the occasional change in texture the same looping notes are repeated in a slow ponderous manor, using the same set of two or three synth sounds to create it. On listening to this one is led to believe that this is Ildjarn’s first time playing a keyboard and he got so excited about the atmospheres it invoked that he did not feel the need to add much beyond pressing three notes for nine minutes at a time.

It must be stated that this album is indeed atmospheric and extremely relaxing to listen to, but these are both things that can be gleaned from later ambient efforts such as Hardangervidda without the extreme minimalism. There one can find the same tools being used to create tension and build and a hint at structure, here on can find none of those things. If one also takes into account that its similarities to Ildjarn’s black metal albums are very subtle, requiring one to be already very familiar with this body of work, Landscapes should only be attempted by the most committed of Ildjarn fans, and even then there is no guarantee of enjoyment. Bear in mind that if an album only makes sense in the context of other releases by the same artist (double albums excluded) then it will probably be left wanting. The most obvious positive to take away from all this is that lessons were learned from Landscapes. By the time Hardangervidda was released Ildjarn and his collaborator Nidhogg had trimmed the fat away from this music to create something truly beautiful.