Morthound
Spindrift
[Cold Meat Industry]


”Spindrift” is my favorite release ever from the cult post-industrial label CMI and ironically it is out of print. I have no familiarity with other Morthond/Morthound records and I hear that each new release from him had a surprising change in mood and style.

For someone with no extensive background in this type of music, it could be simplifiedly called ”ambient”. But that does not tell much about it, yet. Morthound, and post-industrial in general, is about atmosphere. A great part of it is also the ability of the listener to get into the depths of its electronic web of sounds, since true art here is as incomprehensible to the uninitiated as genuine black metal is to the mainstream audience.

What is going on in ”Spindrift”, is elven, it’s enchanting, it’s light with dark overtones and dark with light overtones. There are some bright, fairytalish melodies repeated distant over a texture of tribal sounding drumbeats, which are used in hypnotic amounts on this record. Sorrow and mysticism appear here, in some duets between a carefully constructed, minimal but full-sounding ”orchestration” and ethereal female vocals.

These descriptions are nowhere near as unique as the record in itself is… there are aesthetic attributes that have been used by Dead Can Dance and others, but the result is something quite unlike anything I have heard before. It’s a realm of forest myths, as beautiful as it is primal and dark.

The darkness of this record is not hostile or noisy, but it is very apparent in the depths of the emotion it invokes and the concentration it requires to feel the lines of energy that tie the pieces of this music together. I don’t see this as any kind of entertainment.


© 1999 black hate