MoRkObOt – GoRgO

By RingMaster Review on September 28, 2016 • ( 0 )

Photo credit: Muur Studio

For us there are few bands which produce grooves and unpredictable twists as carnivorous as they are relentlessly addictive and inventive than MoRkObOt, and the creators of rhythmic and grooved entanglements have done it again with fifth album GoRgO, woven a web of psyche twisting trespasses through their twin bass and psychotic drum instrumental alchemy.

The Italian trio of bassists Lin and Lan, and drummer Lon have excavated their most primal yet dynamically and imaginatively inventive maelstrom of sound yet with GoRgO, almost as if their twelve years and previous quartet of releases have been building up to this momentous moment. Recorded by Giulio Ragno Favero (Zu, Teatro degli Orrori, OvO, One Dimensional Man) at Lignum Studio in Italy, the album manages to stir an intimate as well as broadly ravenous incitement across seven slices of aural psychosis. The press release for GoRgO describes the album as “low-end noise rock origami” and from its first crunching breath a folding and twisting of texture and convention is exactly what involves the listener.

Opener Kogromot instantly grabs body and imagination as the opening lure of beats play like a side show barker, inviting attention as the waiting dexterity and rapacity of the bass slung duo stands poised to join in the ensnaring of ears and dismantling of expectations. Quickly the virulence of the track consumes ears; swinging beats and hungry grooves creating a raw festival of cantankerous sound and revelry that preys on the senses as much as it ignites them.

gorgo_RingMasterReview The mouth-watering start continues through the darker excitable throes of Kologora, Lon’s jungle of twisted rhythms alone ear and appetite gripping. As ever there is a predatory side to the heavy and the creatively dissentient nature of the MoRkObOt sound, the shadow lingering tone of the first track a growling antagonist in the second and subsequently an invasive almost cancerous infestation in the third. Gorokta takes a less direct approach to stirring up the emotions than its predecessors, their more forceful intrusiveness replaced by a ‘mellower’ and expansive adventure weaving more textural and sonic hues in its head spinning proposal. At times Lon is a blur of sticks and beats whilst Lin and Lan sculpt a calmer but emotionally dangerous landscape of enterprise.

There is no other band like MoRkObOt, their technical craft and distinct imagination blending forms of simplicity with seriously involved imagination, every note as revealed again within the outstanding Ogrog, skilfully and instinctively inventive to send the listener spinning into fresh adventures each and every time shared. Another track which prowls, virtually stalks the senses with rhythmic dexterity to lust over, it makes way for the harmonic discord and heterodoxic Kromot. The track glorious invades and seduces body and spirit, nurturing a creative and renegade instinct within itself and its targets. For some reason steampunk like imagery comes to mind during the track, aural technology and aesthetic designs coming together like a puppeteer which in many ways is what MoRkObOt are; puppeteers of rhythms, riffs, and grooves, not forgetting the psyche.

The album completes the rousing and seducing of the passions with firstly the dark, sinister, and slightly vaudevillian exploits of Krogor and lastly the epic Gorog which takes and accentuates all those elements and more into an otherworldly and deeply cavernous soundscape. Forcibly mesmeric and bewitchingly off-kilter within its shadowy beauty, the track is stunning; a sublime and transfixing exploration growing from its noir almost jazzy emergence into one deceptively raptorial encounter.

There is no denying we have a real soft spot for MoRkObOt but fans or not there is no escaping that GoRgO is the finest entanglement with the band yet and one of the year’s most irresistible offerings.

GoRgO is out now via Supernatural Cat on CD, Vinyl, and digitally.