Ian Boddy's DiN presents another sonic treatise on cosmic concepts with a collaboration by Bakos Sirros and Node's Dave Bessell. The usual and very welcome arsenal of analog synthesizers are the real stars, operating at full tilt like sound cannons clearing a swath over suspect terrain.
Entrenching, expansive and penetrating, Morphogenic indulges the domain of space but is nothing remotely like an ambient record. On "Oblivion," rhythms percolate and crisp sheets of oscillator-driven distillations undulate by way of the gargantuan tones coaxed from Sirros' Serge and Buchla modular synthesizers. A menacing bass drone stirs beneath and "Above The Snow" like a horrifying experiment left behind on the set of a John Carpenter film. The gate-flanged snare effect hammers out a beat through a volley of shimmering timbres like a fragmentation grenade — Trent Reznor would green over like a mossed stone if he heard it.
Featuring flautist India Czajkowska, "Inwards" is an elegant crafting of murky shades that echo Phaedra in its aesthetic and Teutonic rhythm base. "Corruption" evolves with a manic urgency that harks back to the darkness of Mark Shreeve's "Assassin." The strata of grizzled synthbass and shifting intervals bounce off each other mercilessly like barrels strung together over a dam and loaded with helpless lambs.
Without warning, the duo is a trio on "Heterodyne." Here, another node alumnus, Ed Buller, steps in armed with his own Moog modular unit. On this choice excursion, the musicians reassert that a melancholic musical genre can be both aggressive and multi-faceted and mere steps away from a detour into arcane waters. Shards of sound shift endlessly and attempt vainly to connect like jigsaw pieces in a virile miasma the likes of which has been mined and exploited since the early 70s — a journey which has no foreseeable terminus.
Amid the pervasive download-only histrionics is the pleasant actuality that Morphogenics is available in a convenient digipack as well as a direct digital format, though the former is topped by a supremely intriguing photographic capture. The digipack is a limited release of only 500 copies.
Tracks:
1. Oblivion 9:34
2. Above The Snow 6:06
3. Disorder 6:19
4. Inwards 6:50
5. Denormal 8:34
6. Corruption 6:33
7. Heterodyne 9:41
8. Submerge 6:12
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