UHUSHUHU: Zvirat

Release year: 2023
Label: Zoharum

And here we are again, with more of Polish label Zoharum’s recent ambient releases. As those of you who’ve read my reviews of Vidna Obmana’s (here) and The Stargazer’s Assistant’s (here) recent releases on the same label, ambient is a tricky genre of music for me. Luckily, Uhushuhu offer more familiar and, at least to me, accessible elements in both sound and atmosphere.

Conceptually, on the other hand, Zvirat is as obscure and abstract as the releases mentioned above. And all the more so, as the track titles are entirely meaningless at least to a non-Russian speaker – Uhushuhu originates from the St. Petersburg area but has since then relocated to Armenia.

So, what is it that makes Zvirat more accessible to me? Simple: there’s a stronger element of dark ambient here. I wouldn’t go as far as to call the album dark ambient, but in the deep drones and layers of sound, there is some of that esoteric mystery that separates dark ambient from regular ambient.

Zvirat feels in part cosmic, in part mysterious. Some of the tranquil, slowly uncoiling layers of sound feel like they could be in some documentary movie about space: vast, astral, filled with the mystery and awe of boundless space and all its secrets. At other times the album feels like a spirit journey deep into the nocturnal subconscious, to a netherworld beneath the soil and the roots.

There’s something extremely evocative about Uhushuhu’s music. It’s no less abstract than the other ambient releases we’ve recently reviewed, and yet at the same time, there’s a sense of tangibility to the music both Vidna Obmana and The Stargazer’s Assistant lack. Zvirat paints its pictures onto the canvas of the listener’s imagination more efficiently.

Also, Zvirat is the most conventionally musical of the lot. Most of the time it’s all about looping drones, layers of abstract synths and repetitively modulating pseudo-melodies; but there are moments, where the album passes over into almost traditional musical territory. Take for example closing track Povitrie: it’s borderline dungeon synth!

This is a very fortuitious combination of things: the awe and mystery, the esoteric evocativeness of the atmospheres, the elements of dark ambient and the somewhat less absolutely abstract nature of the music makes for an album that’s far easier to get to grips with than most ambient. Zvirat does this without compromising the authenticity or integrity of it’s expression, which is testament to Uhushuhu’s vision and skill.

All in all, from this recent bunch of ambient albums from Zoharum, Zvirat is with a wide margin my favourite. The album is suited for concentrated listening – close your eyes and float on its audial waves – as well as for background ambience; by its nature there is nothing abrasive or confrontational on Zvirat, but at the same time, it’s not so abstract to become obtuse.

Ambient is still a tricky genre for me, but this one I wholeheartedly dig.

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