marsen jules: the empire of silence

German ambient composer Marsen Jules presents The Empire of Silence, an impressive soundtrack to the epic power and beauty of Nordic snow- and ice-landscapes. He sounds even more elegiac, warm, and romantic than ever before, which may be a result of a strict reduction to bittersweet symphonic string-sounds, sounds that Jules lets subtly meander on the listeners' eardrums, moving on the particle-layer of the sound-continuum. Diving deeper into the sounds than ever before, he lets the frequencies reflect across the sound spectrum with an impressive precision. Actually, there is not much space for real silence on the album. Instead, the epic sounds of The Empire of Silence seem to unfold their archaic euphoria best at high volumes. It's a euphoria that carries everything away and occupies the whole space. For the track titles of the eight gems on this album Jules refers to different words for "snow" in the Inuit languages, of which legend says there are dozens. While the melancholic openers "penstla" (the idea of snow) and "tlaslo" (snow that falls slowly) travel softly, the album raises to its full euphoria with "kayi" (drifting snow) and "skriniya" (snow that never reaches the ground). With its epic magic, the nine-minute "katiyana" (night snow) thrills the listener, while "naklin" (forgotten snow) brings a short inhale. The album finds its peak with the ecstatic glissandi of "chathalin" (snow that makes a sizzling sound as it falls on water) and finds its finish in the beautiful and lofty "ylaipi" (tomorrow's snow).