Ogenblik

"Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs—
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress
Its music lest it should not find
An echo in another's mind..."
PB SHELLEY 1822

Ogenblik is the latest music project from Gregor Ruigrok based in Leixlip, Ireland.

Album, This Used To Be The Sound Of The Future, released August 2024.

Ogenblik is a reflective look inwards at our relationship with the natural world, inspired by old field recordings and water stained bird guides.

Support from:

RTÉ Radio 1 - Folk On One
RnaG - An Taobh Tuathail
KEXP - Pacific Notions

"Leixlip-based musician Ogenblik's experiments in retrofuturistic production culminate in his debut album, This Used To Be The Sound of The Future. Employing a range of outdated recording techniques, from dictaphones to the ill-fated MiniDisc, Ogenblik splices everything together with environmental acuteness, Frankensteining innocuous acoustic guitar melodies into more pressing statements on the diminishing shelf-life of technology and human interest.... Mixing cute acoustic guitar lines with fractured beats and computerised sonics gives the instrumental music a voice—a voice which seems to be speaking from a graveyard for dead technologies, reminding you that the passing of time always leaves beauty and intrigue in its wake." - Jay Honeycomb (Pop Matters, No Transmission)

Press for Daffodil:

'A glorious slice of left-field pop... channels some of the woozy, inward-looking ambient pop of artists like Panda Bear, Washed Out and Here We Go Magic... gloriously disorienting' TOME TO THE WEATHER MACHINE

'His latest release is a genre-bender... makes this feel wonderfully organic' PODCART

Featured on DUMMY MAG best new music.

Review of Dúlra by A Closer Listen

For those who love to watch, tally and record birds, Dúlra is a tiny gem, a hummingbird of a release. Last year, Ogenblik (Gregor Ruigrok) released the lovely ambient set, This Used to Be the Sound of the Future. This year the artist shifts gears to the electronic, while preserving the general theme; dúlra is the Irish word for nature.

The story begins in 1936, when Ludwig Koch released a book and recordings of wild birds, the first time such a thing had been made available to the general public. Combining those recordings with his own, and incorporating one of the last conversations he had with his father, Ogenblik connects not only humanity and nature, but humanity and nature across time.

“Teach Duinn” is the brief opener, awash in wooded samples, suggesting a fallen tree by a stream. The spoken word monologue splits the difference between journal entry and poem, while piano provides the melodic underpinning. Birdsong – live and manipulated – rises in the background, finally taking the fore. The electronic timbres surface in “Lark in Wax,” whose opening sample honors Koch and whose pace – akin to a brisk walk – imitates the birder’s quest. Each time the music shifts, another sample of birdsong arises, often in a fascinating manner, as some segments seem surprisingly rhythmic, as if the birds were participants in an improvising band. As in the animal kingdom, each has its space: the birds, the birder, the musician.

“Curlew” is what we would call the Public Service Broadcasting track, replete with song, spoken word and sample, the call of the curlew “capturing the spirit of wild places.” The corresponding ode to the curlew is loving and straightforward, the curlew eventually seeming to duet with the guitar and drums, although we know this scenario not to be true. The difficulty of birding is set against the plentitude of the samples, which reflect the award of capturing the sonic quarry. But the EP’s greatest emotional impact arrives in the final track, as children play, the drums hold down a languid beat, and Ruigrok’s father looks back on his life, sharing that he was in “seventh heaven” when walking the fields. His calm, kind, generous voice speaks through the years, not only to his son, but now to the listener: a love passed down and shared. Dúlra becomes not only a tribute to nature, but to family, and to the treasured spaces that connect them both. (Richard Allen)

Gregor also (occasionally) releases as Trophy Boyfriend