(04.05.05) Morgenstern’s Two Different Faces is a ritual record that
blesses, smudges and exorcises. A break from the blistering noise of
Cold and Zyklen, Two Different Faces cleanses the
atmosphere before it burns the sky. Distant ritual voices drone in
the background against an assembly of rattling cow bell, shadowy
drones, and long tones (“Looking Down a Hill”) while “Railing” circles
around the drain in an endless loop of spooky organ tones and
intermittent samples from passing trains, aborted electrical signals,
and lost children. “Looking for Sand” groans with the pained
exhalation of a shattered tenor, the dismal drone of an abandoned
string quartet and the distant rumble of bombers. These atmospheric
tracks leave the listener in a hypernoid state; a state, as Andrea Börner — founder of Morgenstern — defines, of hypnotic
paranoia: slumbering on the outside, jumping at shadows on the
inside.
However, there are tracks like “Viewer,” “Beasts” and “Faces of
Phobia,” where the beats bite back. “Beasts” begins with a cathedral
choir, a host of heavenly cherubs who single suspended note is
stretched unto infinity. The horizon splits, allowing the dissonant
thunder of rhythmic noise to flush the sky and rain hot stones down on
the cathedral chorus. This is the fusion of Börner’s two
different faces — the atmospheric and the caustic — bringing drone
to noise and hyperkinetic beat movement to dark ambience. Unsettling
samples swirl in the mix, voices crying out “Corruption!” and
“Hypocrisy!” on the one hand and whispering “this will only stick a
minute” on the other. The hypernoid state is both liberating and
frightening.
It is what I like best about Ant-Zen and the entire style of music
that this — and a few other like-minded labels — have as an
aesthetic: compressed energy that both sizzles with kinetic fury and
that bubbles with subterranean mischief. While some records veer to
one extreme or the other, dulling themselves with their
relentlessness, Börner’s Morgenstern has discovered the fine
balance that makes for a very listenable record. Two Different
Faces is neither all noise nor all ambience; it is a dark miasma
that suffocates and stings like a shadowy jellyfish. You can feel its
presence all around you but you can’t make out its shape against the
black backdrop of the water, and then it touches you and the world is
lit with its electric discharge. Recommended.
Two Different Faces is out now on Ant-Zen.
