After spending five years neatly hidden in the realm of electro minimalism, Ulver returned to the more definite (though not a bit less experimental) musical compositions with their 2005 release “Blood Inside”. In this album the Norwegianс let themselves be a bit more noisy and even rocky, but today all these devilish inclinations are restrained and the sound is once again droning, meditative and ambient. The opener “Eos” sets up the dark, melancholic tone that characterizes “Shadows of the Sun” - silent and introvert musical pieces with beats, grand piano and Kristoffer Rygg’s wonderfully expressive vocals gently incorporated into. As usual, Ulver go for atmospheric and sparsely composed tracks, yet “Shadows of the Sun” is far and away from the abstract minimalism of “Silencing the Singing” or “Lyckantropen Themes”. The sound has been enriched considerably by the addition of cello, viola and violin - combine that with layers and layers of keyboards plus Rygg’s ghostly singing, and you can get some idea of the haunting, almost neoclassical beauty of “Funebre”, “Shadows of the Sun” and "What Happened?". As you already guess, this is not the kind of album that you can point out the most outstanding tracks of, especially at first listen - “Shadows of the Sun” is one epic 40-minute piece that has to be perceived as a solid work bigger than the sum of its parts. Even the rework of Black Sabbath’s “Solitude” is easily incorporated in the album’s concept, even though Ulver’s cover version lacks the melancholic flute present in the original. This is the type of music that is beautiful and yet hard to get into, so it requires thorough and patient examination. Evaluating Ulver is always a hard task, but “Shadows of the Sun” is so wonderfully well-executed that it’s a mere step away from complete excellence.