“Possibly the best opus of PW, Morphogenic is a splendid album where traces of Redshift, Arc and Ramp float in a rich and murky sound fauna filled of ambiophonic rhythms”
1 Oblivion 9:34 2 Above the Snow 6:06 3 Disorder 6:19 4 Inwards 6.50 5 Denormal 8:34 6 Corruption 6:33 7 Heterodyne 9:41 8 Submerge 6:12
(CD/DDL 60:07) (V.F.)
(Dark ambient beats)
The universe of Parallel Worlds is as much disturbing and intriguing than enchanting. Now, imagined when join to a quarter of Node! It's with Dave Bessell (Node) that Bakis Sirros has decided to push the 8th chapter of Parallel Worlds towards even darker and more experimental territories of an abstract EM to the colors of a bewitching darkness. Wandering between Arc, Ramp and Redshift, MORPHOGENIC is a splendid album of an empirical EM where the latent rhythms explode and implode in surprising structures with fabulously rich colorful tones. The riffs in it are loud and heavy, the ambiences are breathtaking, and the rhythms are of fire, shaping superb devilish melodies which dance under intense orchestral sails of synths with musical visions affected by its bipolarity.
The first riffs of Oblivion fall with heaviness and clamour. They fall in a glaucous and surrealist ambience where ringings of bottles are forming stunning sound hoops moulded the shapes of chants full of sordid ghostly winds. The rhythm is heavy and unmoving, fed that it is by the heavy reverberations of riffs which resound and make shake the walls of a parallel universe where metallic noises are whispering and escaping to form a fascinating gallop of which the black and abstract gait is fainting little by little in the limbos of the rustles from beyond the grave. And as the universe of Parallel Worlds is never in lack of resources, an enchanting bed song for imps in glass clogs emerges from this nest of colorful tones to sculpt an irresistible ear worm which is perfectly suitable to the darkest of mephistophelic nightmares. Molded in the same pattern of harmonious unreality, Above the Snow extends its breaths of big threatening ocean liner on a river of green mist. The musical envelope is as much sordid as it is melodic with effects of musical slow motions of which the eroded outlines draw of strange reverberating musical effects on a carpet of pulsatory jingles. At first, with slow and oozing of infernal tones, the rhythm bustles about with hesitation on the curves of a bass line whose slow nasal oscillations accompany the heavy and loud hammerings of the percussions. Strikings which pierce the opacity of a dense movement soaked of metallic radio activities which dance under the thick morphic veils of an apocalyptic synth. These morphic veils give a poetic cachet to this other dark work of Parallel Worlds and are making the charms of the grimy Disorder which is caressed by the brief intrusions of a piano looking for its road of harmonies in this somber universe of paranormal musical activities. And if you think that I exaggerate, you have to hear Inwards to know of what is made MORPHOGENIC. This track of ghostly ambiences is to be disadvised if we swim fully in a black night where the whispers feed the walls of a horrifying color of flesh. See? Welcome to the inner dark world of MORPHOGENIC.
After an intro borrowed from the glaucous vibes of Above the Snow, Denormal is struggling between an unchanging rhythm and its metaphysical ambiences. Occult pulsations shape a feudal rhythm which resounds under the lines of a synth and its dark voices. A strange harmony is taking shape behind this cabalistic pattern where the disordered pulsations cogitate with of tremulous strikings of anorexic percussions. These beatings get lost under the burning laments and riffs of a violent guitar à la Robert Fripp, pushing the musical dialogue of Denormal in the most somber hidden recesses of its incomprehensibility. There where the rhythm and moods are switching skins to become darker and incisive. The ambiences of Corruption are feeding on the philosophy of Denormal but with a sharply more experimental approach where Redshift and Ramp torn each other to pieces into implosives lavas. One can't be closer of the deep darkness and anti-music than with Corruption, and this even if residues of harmonies are floating there. The intro of Heterodyne brings us in the gaps of a monasterial universe where the heavy and unsteady reverberations get confused into the murky lamentations of possessed soul. The rhythm is awakened by fragmentary approaches. Built on palpitations which stamp of a virgin nervousness, it lives and dies under diverse forms. Being cuddle by synths with lines subdivided in their hollow and honeyed approaches, it beats of an uncertain measure and prays for an ambient passage before running again on this unstable musical area that is Heterodyne. Submerge closes the storm with a powerful immersive title where the rhythm is slow and molded in dense orchestrations of a synth which interlace its divinatory harmonies and its spectral ambiences in a bewitching cocktail of shady emotions. It's kind of very beautiful, intensely melancholic and it concludes marvellously this attractive odyssey into the mysterious universe of Bakis Sirros' supernatural phantasmagoria.
There are no doubts in my mind; MORPHOGENIC is the best work of Parallel Worlds. It's an intense album where dark state of mind feast in parallel emotions. It's exactly the repertoire of Bakis Sirros but with a much more theatrical, even cinematographic, approach. One inventing a new horror movie in each new listening. It's Dark. Very dark with an elegant prism of beauty. In fact, one cannot turn out the ear on an album which allies the sibylline rhythms of Redshift and Arc, the audacity of Ramp and the unbearable world of Parallel Worlds' sound experiments. Not to listen if we are afraid of the dark …
Sylvain Lupari (October 17th, 2012) ****½*
Available at DiN Bandcamp