Owl Rave, the brainchild of Gregor Huber, is a multimedia project which takes its primary inspiration from ‘Twin Peaks’. This may not be immediately apparent from listening to the album – reducing a multimedia concept to sound alone will always strip out some of its layers of meaning – but the sonic exploration of dualities and dreams is deeply compelling. Here, Huber is joined by Antonia Steiner and Markus Dolp on vocals, and their differing styles certainly add depth and dynamic tension to the material.
Slow, deliberate beats crunch and trudge over long, drawn-out chords which crawl, flanged and spindly to create darkly atmospheric soundscapes. Blank monotone vocals add to the all-pervading bleakness of ‘Searching’. Comparisons to ‘Faith’-era Cure stand against the claustrophobic, dense feel of the album although sonically, ‘Owl Rave’ paints from a much broader sonic palette, dragging in elements of doom and trip-hop to paint a striking scene.
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Things turn for the darker and heavier on ‘A Knife for Every Heart’. Crushing power chords drone and hang in suspension while Dolp growls the lyrics menacingly. It’s grandly theatrical. ‘Fright Car’ plunges further into murky darkness, Dolp snarling like a wounded demon from deep within a rumbling sonic cavern. Dank, murky sounds resonate, booming bass tones and fiendish whispers build a doomy, sinister atmosphere. Ethereal female vocals grace the mellow closer ‘Find Me’, on which skittering beats jab through soft swathes of synth and lead toward a distant glimmer of light.
Owl Rave Online
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