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May 1, 2020 - Pomperipossa
I can’t go to the beach right now. But I still know. We and the ocean are drowning. Can’t you hear it?
On the phone this week my mother told me that blue whales can fart a bubble big enough to contain a horse. I’m not sure if I believe her, but the logical child in me thinks it sounds plausible. A quick Google search elicits the fact that the jury is still out on whether cetaceans fart at all.
The fact that there are still such mysteries as whale farts left on Earth for us to explore gives me hope for some sort of future that I lost for a second amid the pandemic. What I like most about this observation of a popular internet factoid is not finding out whether it is true or false, but learning that there have only been a few recorded instances of scientists witnessing a blue whale farting period.
We think we know it all by now, in a world of technology-driven economics and a competitive global ecosystem of information. Where SpaceX is going to take the richest people to the moon soon for a vacation. We’ve mastered the terrestrial landscape and enterprised it to suit some of us best. We eat facts on the internet for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But few of us are actually properly hydrated, and fewer still have the patience to pause and listen to the sound of water and the life within it.
The Dark Morph project is a collaboration between Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Jón Þór Birgisson, more widely known by us and others as Jónsi. (Jónsi has certainly been busy so far this year.) Dark Morph II is their latest EP, released on Pomperipossa Records. It is not for the listener in a hurry who only has time for earworms. The three tracks on the EP are atmospheric soundscapes with loose or no recognizable syntactic structure. They were inspired by and created from recordings von Hausswolff and Jónsi took on a boat together on the open seas during an arts fellowship with the TBA21–Academy. As you can imagine, they sound like they were made on another planet, alien and sublime.
An interesting thing happens when artists like Jónsi who have relatively wide acclaim for their musical projects release work that the music blogs of the web don’t really know how to categorize. Much of the way music is talked about in writing is by relating and connecting tropes and patterns we see in the safety of genre lines. Dark Morph II is something that’s almost impossible to write about in that way. I and others like me probably wouldn’t be paying much attention to it if artists didn’t have their names on it. If I want to listen to ocean sounds, I Google-search that. How often have I Google-searched ocean sounds? Maybe once in my lifetime so far.
In fact, I’m still trying to figure out the best context for listening to Dark Morph II. The best I’ve found so far is listening on the floor of my studio, breathing deep and looking up at the ceiling fan. But now that I am here on the floor paying attention, I am grateful that Jónsi on my radar asked me to be here for a moment. That seems to have been the intention of Jónsi and von Hausswolff with this release—to ask us on the land to stop and remember the ocean for give or take half an hour. They used their voices to get us who are visibly in the know about music and culture to listen.
There’s nothing more radical to be heard on this EP than any other ocean recordings. Dark Morph knew that nature was enough already. They simply curated a sound collection and gave it enough musical human perspective to hold our attention. It’s a moment of learning, of reflection. It’s a quiet interaction in a loud world.
The first track, ‘Dive-in,’ was actually designed for a context most of us will never be able to experience. It’s a soundtrack to a video installation by the Danish art collective SUPERFLEX. On its own, it becomes a soundtrack to whatever you might be doing when you come across it. The track is almost twenty minutes long but it changes just enough during that time to keep you tuned in. The soundscape feels endless and a bit lonely like a probe in space built to observe but not to connect with what or who it finds.
The second track, ‘Humpback Whale Choir,’ features whale song recorded by Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza with Dark Morph. Even though I’m sure it’s been engineered some in a studio, it comes off as a serendipitous recorded moment that showcases the volume of conversation and vocal stylings of humpback whales. Dark Morph, again, took a light hand. Whale songs don't need embellishment. They simply need your ears and your awareness.
The third track, ‘Dark Wave,’ has a plodding rhythm that some have called danceable. I imagine the dance to this song would be subtle and heavy, like carrying large stones and marching in time on the ocean floor. Sounds undulate and reveal themselves as you listen. Eventually human voices become the driving beat, chanting ‘dark morph’ over and over again, drawing connection between the watery expanse ahead of you and a room full of dark minimal techno.
Because it is sound art and not easy to plug into music writing, Dark Morph II will definitely hold only a quick moment in the blogosphere before we all move on to languages that are easier to understand. I still recommend you give it a little bit of your attention. At least listen to the humpback whales. Consider how much they have to say without the least concern for you and your noise. They dance above you carrying your stones. They might fart in your general direction, and the bubble would engulf you like a horse. ☔