reviews
"A strange one this, involving two projects uniting from the worlds of ambient and minimal, which could mean the first mineral bambi movement. Mr Lineout himself says, “although the three songs are relatively disparate in style they fit together perfectly, this is one to listen to in one go,” and he’s right, although being so short you’d have to being living a jetstream life not to be listening in one go.
So, SonVer are an experimental band from the UK and Elephant Leaf come from Belgium and the first last songs are Sonver material with Elephant Leaf added, the middle tune an Elephant Leaf piece with Sonver absorbed.
‘Gomera’ is groaning organic sounds, like a moon landscape documentary with mumbling female vocals and no Clangers, gradually stabilising as a smear of morose ambient. 'Love Is Where You Make It, Love Is Where You Are’ could well be the sort of music jazz-fuelled winebars and modern museums play or make for themselves in the early hours of the morning, although nobody will know unless you secrete recorders in these buildings to retrieve later and they’re wise to such tricks (“we don’t need no steenken’ ‘installations’!”) Or, to put it another way, it’s slow motion early Morcheeba.
Sonver emerge as the more interesting of the two artists as the slow build of the anti-Portishead ‘Safety In Numbness’, airy and saccharine sweet, pretty and warm, seemingly inconsequential until they turn on an electron and a guitar whirls through, disembowelling the modest but grand mood neatly. And fade…..
Bit weird, but in all the right ways."
Review of '3 Songs', taken from Mick Mercer's 'The Mick'.
"Now this is something rather special, came out back at the end of May, a three track seventeen-and-a-half-minute collaboration between the usually instrumental sound art/post rock band from the UK called SonVer and the glowing minimalist experimental outfit from Belgium known as Elephant Leaf. Three extremely beautiful, minimal, simple yet deliciously complex pieces that glow in to life via Lucie Dehli’s vivid vibrant voice. Lucie really does bring it all to life, her voice is radiant, a lazy comparison would be somewhere near a far more soothing silky Bjork. The three tracks and the sounds therein fit together so so well; pulsing ambience, quiet minimal strength, glowing tension, wondering resonance, beautifully precise detail, hypnotic warmth, radiant colour – a comforting dramatic, quiet, soothing and powerfully naked experimental masterpiece, safety in the rewarding drama of the numbness. Beautiful. Single of the week."
Review of '3 Songs', taken from Organ Magazine, July 2008.
"When gathered with family members in your home projection room for an evening of art movies from the early 20th century, have you ever hankered after some appropriate music to complete the atmosphere? It's a conundrum, for sure. The solution might come in the form of the eponymous debut album on their own Disconnected label by SonVer. Drifting like mist on the river, booming like ships that collide in the night, as plangent as rain on glass, and sometimes as harshly implacable as waves against the sea wall, SonVer's music melds cello, guitar, effects and samples (plus, on 'The Bell Tower', shifting tides of treated trumpet) with nimble grace and otherworldly effect. More than just another ethereal project, this is, dare I say it, real music. I've heard so much stuff in this general area which sounds rather uncomfortably like someone holding down a synth preset while boosting the reverb, and loftily calling the resulting noise 'ambient', that it's a pleasure to hear a collection of pieces - like 'Transparent Arms', with its hints at rhythm, and 'Khat Show Host', a hot night in Morocco created right there in your living room - that have real ideas behind them. Cinematic and sweeping, yet detailed to the nth degree, SonVer will hit the spot even if you normally run a mile at the first hint of ambience. And I'll tell you this: Un Chein Andalou will never seem the same again."
Review of 'SonVer', taken from Nemesis To Go magazine, Issue 2
"Listening to SonVer is akin to stepping through an aural modern art gallery..."
Mellifua.com December 2006
"The London duo SonVer started. A mixture of structured ambient and post rock were presented with guitar and cello. Slight similarities to Sigur Ros and Godspeed! were noticable, but also to the soundtrack 'Aktivitaeten' from David Holmes (eg.Code 46). The sensitive melodies managed to convince the bound audience which sent the band on their way with a long applause."
Review of SonVer's live show in Leipzig, Germany. Taken from www.feindesland.de [roughly translated from German]
Sonver -Sonver (Disconnected)
"SonVer (yes that's how they spell it) are Joanna Quail and Ben McLees. She plays cello, he plays guitar, they both do funny things with computers and they've played the Royal Albert Hall, apparently, which is frankly more impressive than anything I've ever done. In their publicity picture they look well moody. This, their debut album, is a dense atmospheric, instrumental affair, using layer upon layer of gloomy acoustic and electric cello, chiming guitar, deft touches of electronica and the occasional skittery beat to conjure up images of dark forests and half-remembered nightmares. Sometimes abstract, atonal or ambient, always weirdly unsettling, the music at times recalls, the spooky bits in A Silver Mt Zion/Godspeed... tracks, and at others captures that instinctive sense of wrongness in Aphex Twin's ambient stuff. There are touches of baroque and celtic, and moments of transcendental wonder, like when "Last Thursday" bursts forth into peals of jubilant melodic noise and you know that it's doing that post rock thing of wiring directly into your emotional centres in a way that no skinny kid with an acoustic guitar ever could. This is an accomplished, enthralling and occasionally startling album. Go sit somewhere spooky, dim the lights, stick it on, and give yourself a weird-on."
Taken from www.diskant.net, May 2006
Sonver - s/t (Disconnected)
Following on from their self released EP earlier this year, Sonver return with their first full length album. Lending heavily on the material from the original EP, these tracks are sandwiched by some new material which provides an exciting new progression in Sonver's sound.
The record still drips with cinematic soundscapes that flow and combine the orchestral with the electronic, including samples and drum beats. But over the longer format there has been more room to experiment with different textures and it is these contrast that come to the fore. Where 'Anonima' is a lush melodic piece that is as warm and comforting as it is disconcerting, 'Last Thursday' crashes onto the scene will all the bowed pomp and splendour of a Bond theme tune. Howling guitar distortion is fed through a multitude of effects and production to lurk as a malevolent under current. There seems to be a fluid theme running through the whole album with the watery sounding guitars of 'Viaje' wobbling through the speakers. This is interrupted by the lo-fi loops of feedback and distortion in 'Procession' which is very much in the experimental mould, ebbing and building over a plucked string mantra with a deftness that the Dr Who sound effects department could only dream of. For all their genre-breaking and cross pollination of sound and vision techniques, Sonver remain immensely listenable. And it is this which is perhaps their greatest accomplishment.
Taken from www.tastyfanzine.org, December 2005
Sonver - ep#2
"There must be something in the water this month as yet another lo-fi instrumental gem passes over the tasty gramophone. Sonver describe their art as 'Sound Sculptures', a concise description of the mix of strings arrangements and guitar with occasional percussion that washes across the speakers.
This is perfect soundtrack material and that is exactly what Sonver have been doing, collaborating with film makers and visual artists to produce multi media live performances. 'Transparent Arms' introduces sub-continental scales over bass-rich break beats and more disembodied percussion to further disorientate your average NME reader. Engaging yet not intrusive, this won't be appearing on CD:UK. But this is music which ploughs its own furrow, zigging between genres and zagging through pigeon holes."
Taken from www.tastyfanzine.org, April 2005
