Dark Morph - Dark Morph II (2020)

Dark Morph’s Jónsi (Sigur Rós) and Carl Michael Von Hausswolff turn whale cries and subaquatic recordings into a strikingly haunting elegy for marine life - big RIYL Rashad Becker, The Hafler Trio, Chris Watson.

Fuck me if the massive marine mammals in ‘The Humpback Whale Choir’ aren’t absolutely lamenting the state of it all right now. For eight minutes, Jónsi and his paranormal-specialist accomplice arrange the whales’ choir into a song that resembles keeners at a funeral as much as a pack of wounded cyborg wolves.

Whether thru the musician’s treatment of the material, if it actually happened like that, or our auditory pareidolia, the piece conveys a clear message about the advancing death of the oceans, which they outline more literally as: “The exploitation of the oceans, in conjunction with the heavy pollution (from plastic waste to nuclear radio-activity) has to stop, and be replaced by collaborative manners co-operating with all life on or globe.”

It’s dead uncanny to feel like these distant dinosaur like creatures are communicating with you, but that’s exactly what the album’s strongest piece feels like, whereas the previous video installation soundtrack ‘Dive-In’ focuses on subtler subaquatic resonances with 20 minuets of richly immersive results formerly used by Danish collective SUPERFLEX, and ‘Dark Wave’ shapes up recordings of the Pacific Ocean as 4 minutes of cold and slow industrial techno currents and vocals for those times when you really want to guilt the darkroom.