A Field of Secondary Craters

Following releases on Where To Now?, Reckno, Indole Records, Slumdiscs, and BAROC, Morkebla's latest record is a 5-track EP titled "A Field Of Secondary Craters". The record opens with "The Ground Under My Feet Became Water", an obscure and incantatory looped segment made entirely with found sounds and field recordings (a plaintive horn, metallic sounds, water). The next tracks from "A Field Of Secondary Craters" pull away from the vaporous introductory loop-based process (that sits not so far from Lee Gamble's "Diversions 1994-1996") and reveal a more luminous facet of his work. Utilizing some analog drum machines (Alesis SR-16 and MFB-522), tape echoes, delay effects and a Roland Juno-106, Morkebla's new EP is a twenty minute long journey throughout synth-laden textures with moments of pure reverie. While "Snow Canvas" is an ode to minimal composition, a celestial held chord accompanied with chugging beats, third track Infrared Ice Image is a one-minute synth bass loop in slow-motion, reminiscent of an early Boards of Canada interlude. Disrupting the peacefulness that the ambience suggests, Astro:Dynamics' signee and Posh Isolation's remix contributor Quiltland delivers a remix for "Snow Canvas" emphasizing on the ambient chord intro with a progression that stirs the listener up from quietude through an incursion of more assertive snares and hi-hats, finishing up with gradually built Autechre-esque synth harmonies.

To conclude Morkebla's "A Field Of Secondary Craters", elegant eleven-minute long synth arpeggios entwine on "Submerged Dunes" with a simple hi-hat and strangled bell as rhythmic elements, leaving an unsettling feeling as the synth slides across cut-off and filtered sounds. We are now literally sunk and submerged into another world. As we let go of the fear of uncertainty, "A Field Of Secondary Craters" plays a second time, starting all over again from the shamanistic introduction. The dunes, the ground, the water...;