Nowadays, albums broadly themed around the concept of outer space are automatically assumed to have a melancholy atmosphere. Crossing the final frontier was, in the sixties, infused with a glamour and an innate optimism over the possibilities of exploring new galaxies and/or life forms. Somehow the sickness of our own planet has infected these dreams of the future and means that such journeys are mostly conceived as trips to the dark side.
Displacer's Night Gallery gently breaks this mould even though it seems at first to fit into the mood of spooked panic over the vastness of the universe. The big beats and disconcertingly insistent piano line of Phantom Limb, the opening track, has an air of menace that wouldn't be out of place is a psychological thriller.
However, a more neutral, calming ambience pervades the next two tracks - Invisible and Wave - before the mood shifts completely for Radioactive. This is one of two tracks, the other is Awakening, with a more grounded, at times even frenetic energy more suited to a moonwalk in a disco than a gravity-free environment.
This shows that Displacer, aka Toronto-based electronic music composer, Michael Morton, has a more ambiguous relationship with space as a place.
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A title like Ghost Planet prepares you for something spookier than the chop-stick like keyboard rhythm that underpins this tune.
Morton's one ill-asdvised foray into vocals comes on Falling which has a characterless Moby-type voice (with a bit of vocoder) singing about being on the way down from an empty space with the less than reassuring promise that "When I hit the ground below, I'm gonna take you with me".
The last of the eleven tracks is called Ice Cold, a drifting drone-based ambient piece which is more chilled than chilly.
Night Gallery is an album with a distinctive character but of fluctuating moods.
It is a fascinating and, at times, elegant mosaic that is a soundtrack more suited to gazing at the stars with a sense of mystery and wonder rather than with fear or foreboding.
Displacer's Website
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