Metamorfozy is less of a band and more of a project, being a meeting of minds and talents of Rune Lindbaek, one of Norway’s electro-club pioneers for the last twenty years, and Oyvind Blikstad who is a composer and producer trained in musicology.
The album is like a soundtrack of epic proportions, and most of the titles on the album are instrumental, or near instrumental.
Proceedings open with ‘Bright Leaves’ an atmospheric number that initially sounded a bit like the intro to Bauhaus ‘Hollow Hills’, slightly doomy and boomy, before a lush piano melody comes in.
‘Theme From Metamorfozy’ is more of the same, an excellent soundscape worked around piano and strings that builds to a crescendo before fading to single piano notes. Towlines’ is more contemporary and club orientated with synth and keys used around a sparse vocal arrangement of the refrains “Always inside my heart" and “Knowing that you love me.”
‘In Those Breaths’ is a moody and bleak piano melody which conjures up images of a frozen wasteland barely inhabited, and with scattered phrases like “Step into the night. If your heart’s not already taken.” This perfectly complements the musical tone.
‘Heksedans’ opens with an echoey piano that sounds like it’s being played with a very large room, before mutating into something akin to a Balkan gypsy song, as a result it is one of the most satisfying tracks on the album.
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‘Fata Morgana’ comes across as a dub track, with a call and response vocal that works well:-“Be aware of me.”(“Are you there?”)/“Where are you?” (“Be aware”)/ “Where are you?”(“Of me.")
‘Formidable’ has a certain 1960s retro charm with a strings arrangement and a slight seediness in the vocals which is reminiscent somewhat of the late Serge Gainsbourg:- “Your red dress lights up like fire, dancing flames of desire/ I could stare… For a million years.”
The final four tracks are all basically instrumentals working round similar arrangements, although the last track on the album, ‘Here The Woods Stand Silent’ is extremely evocative, a hesitant piano melody which creeps in then stops, the gradual onset of silence as the notes die away almost as important to this track as the music itself.
Overall, whilst this will not be to everyone’s taste, in Decasia, Metamorfozy have created a work of outstandingly stark beauty.
Beatservice Records online
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