UGOR - Sundown

UGOR

​Sundown
self-released; 2016

3.3 out of 5

By Ted Rogen

UGOR is a project from a Belfast-based musician who recently released Sundown. The album certainly has its own sound and revolves around white noise, guitar and vocals that sound as if they were taken down a couple of octaves.

Utilizing white noise is something that has been done before. In fact if you want hear a prime example of how to use white noise effectively I would listen to “Glide” by Fennesz. Sundown has almost no hooks, takes patience and has some highs and lows. The biggest mishap is when UGOR stretches a riff or idea well beyond their limit. There are some moments where UGOR shines but it feels fairly sporadic.

Take for instance the opener “AoD” where I thought balance between the clean acoustic guitar, vocals and white noise worked out very well. The song would have been great if it would have ended around the four-minute mark. To be blunt UGOR plays a variation of the same initial riff and it gets exhausted.

At the end of the spectrum are the next two songs “Solstice” and “Outro” which both feel like transitional fillers intended to go into a larger, more expansive piece - that song does come and is titled “The Nomad's Lament - 4V.” The singing isn't as catchy as on “AoD” and veers towards spoken word in which you can’t hear the lyrics. 

“Run” spills over from being white noise into digital distortion. Perhaps there is a song buried underneath. Even the most hardcore fans of avant-garde music will have a hard time dealing with these harsh noises. 

The biggest mishap is “Stormy Seas - 4V2” which is more less a basic chord progression over white noise. This song may have worked much better with a crescendo or layers of other instrumentation that slowly comes. Instead your mind loses interest because of the seven-minute runtime, which doesn’t have a notable change. 

​Sundown has a lot of promise and can hopefully be used as a foundation for greater things to come. UGOR has some decent ideas and has a sound but the music is in desperate need of more dynamics and more transitions. I would say UGOR is a case of wait and see.

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