I came to know Völur through tominator’s review of Death Cult, and that album was both a surprise and a revelation for me. Five years later, the trio of Laura C. Bates (violin, electric violin, viola, cymbals, vocals), Lucas Gadke (electric bass, double bass, harmonium, keyboards, tanbur, clarinet, bass clarinet, vocals), and Justin Ruppel (drums, percussion) returns to collaborate with producer and sound artist James Beardmore, aka Cares. Their intention on Breathless Spirit is to marry doom, folk, blackened passages, free jazz, classical music, oriental instruments, and electronic textures into a dark, mythic, and ritualistic journey through grief, tension, isolation, and transformation.
The record begins with a slow and meditative build-up; "Hearth" is inspired by Mahler’s “Ninth Symphony”, and its motif reappears in different forms throughout the album. The two-part “Windbourne Sorcery”, which follows, acts like a shamanic procession, incorporating choirs, as well as Persian and Kurdish musical influences, and gradually increases the intensity of Breathless Spirit , until it culminates in the title track, the album’s narrative and musical focal point. This one begins as a death doom monolith, evolves into a free jazz, dissonant and avant-garde storm of cacophony that eventually calms down and takes the shape of a contrasting vocal duet, accompanied by a weeping violin and a melancholic piano, all taken straight from Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads. Its two-minute outro is breathtaking and one of the most gripping pieces of music I have heard this year. Overall, “Breathless Spirit” features the album’s heaviest parts, along with the crushing closer, “Death In Solitude”, and splendidly highlights how a song can shift from thunderous to fragile, from dense to airy, and how contrasts can be both bold and captivating.
The beautiful cover art is a stone cut print by Inuit artist Saimaiyu Akesuk, used with permission from Dorset Fine Arts. The album’s theme is based on Grettir's Saga, an Icelandic tale set in the eleventh century about Grettir Ásmundarson, and the listener gets to travel through the protagonist’s curse, outlaw status, loneliness, and early death.
As hard as I tried these last couple of months that I have had it in my hands, I could not find anything to complain about. Breathless Spirit delivers on every front; it’s a cinematic, emotional, immersive, and unconventional work of art. A modern doom classic.
“Waves shall break on sky aflame
Barrow-bound in wind and rain
Follow the sun back whence the shadows had come”
