Unconventional conjurer of surrealistic soundscapes, illustrator of dreams and nightmares with a distinct style.
Surreal music, subterranian soundscapes. Dormant volcanoes coming to life. Scratches, crackles and human voice put through alchemy of sound. Bass abuse. Church bells conjured out of the sound of breathing. Odd evo/invocative lyrics. Hauntingly disturbing atmospheres, subconscious landscapes.
About mid April 2003 Ovro sat down at her computer armed with a couple of basic wave editors, a cheap malfunctioning mic and her voice, and set out to show she couldn’t make music. The result of this endeavour, her debut album Malice in Underland, was released by Some Place Else late 2003. From these minimalisic beginnings – in experience, equipment, approach and soundscapes – has grown an interesting and able sound artist, exploring the ragged edges and murky undercurrents of reality.
Ovro’s second studio album, late 2005’s dark ambient / cinematic soundscaping / aural pathworking piece Gegendurchgangenzeit, is a critically acclaimed work gaining praise and reports on causing weird, wonderful and scary mental imagery. Her third studio release appeared on the market in late 2006 and is a double EP on one CD, Mosaick the Serpent / Vipera Aurea. On this album, Ovro is again creating disturbing, distressing and at times downright scary atmospheres, spiced with her kind of humour and echoing her magico-religious view of the world.
Sounds like?
“Pure electronic chaos, and almost noise, in the sense of there being just a montage of sound and samples.”
“THIS is what I call electronic! Incredible sounds!”
(Heathen Harvest on Mosaick the Serpent / Vipera Aurea)
“Fans of Coil should be definitely drawn into this.” (Vital Weekly on Mosaick the Serpent / Vipera Aurea)
“The music of this Finnish outfit could be filed under ambient or minimal, since what we hear are mostly distant, low-keyed noises and sounds, blend together to create dark and disturbing sceneries. It could be the soundtrack to some modern Asian horror film, or field recordings done inside a strange infernal dimension.” (Filth Forge on Mosaick the Serpent / Vipera Aurea)
“If you like dark ambient, if you look for music that will scare you and make you want to curl up into a ball in the corner, if you sit on your own and in the dark then buy it.” (Judas Kiss on Mosaick the Serpent / Vipera Aurea)
“Gegendurchgangenzeit is nonetheless an impressively monomaniac achievement – throughout, cold digital winds and abrasive fragments of sound scour icily imagined tundras.”
“Ovro’s music never stops flowing forward, opening up a succession of dark, compelling vistas.” (The Wire on Gegendurchgangenzeit)
“A dark, unworldly journey – maybe a space trip but than one that has an uncertain outcome. Everything is sucked into a black hole. Ambient music with a strong twist for the darker undercurrents in life.” (Vital Weekly on Gegendurchgangenzeit)
“The seven tracks take me into another dimension, this is how Dark(underwater)ambient should sound like.” (van Leeuwen on Gegendurchgangenzeit)
“An ultimate deep listening session for small hours and unexpected juxtapositions of memories.” (Imhotep on Gegendurchgangenzeit)
“It is like listening to the infrastructure of a building, with wires, pipes, walls and joists conspiratorially crepitating to each other. Over this, Ovro whispers barbed threats in a little girl’s voice. It is a piece born to live in the intimacy of the headphones, never taking the listener beyond the space between their ears.” (The Wire on Live in Placard #7)
“It’s like Alice in Wonderland is communicating with aliens that speak in dark crackles and strange hiss. It’s not often one comes across such music, implying the originality of it of course.” (Phosphor Magazine on Live in Placard #7)
“Malice in Underland is the first release of female musician Ovro and is categorized as “vocal microsound”, minimal microsounds of manipulated noises and voices, that take the listener on a bizarre and creepy journey into a realigned reality.” (Toronto Industrial Kollektive on Malice in Underland)