One of my favorite musical things these days is buying full discographies on Bandcamp. Some labels or artists will offer a deal so, when I have a little extra coin and I’ve already had a good musical experience with someone, I take a flyer. The only downside is that this leaves me with an awful lot of music to dig through; admittedly, there are far worse problems. So this will be my first entry, in an occasional series, looking at the gems I find in my library.
Now that we have that preamble out of the way, I want to talk about the two releases from My Own Cubic Stone on Kalamine Records. “Les enfants de Médée” appears to be inspired by a dramatic play written in the 1600’s by Pierre Corneille. Long story very short, Médée is a sorceress who exacts revenge on her ex-husband by killing their twin boys. I’ve read that the reception to “Médée” (both the original and an opera that used it as a story base in the 1700’s) was “lukewarm.” Hard to believe with that plot line; it sounds like a sure-fire hit.
But credit to My Own Cubic Stone to turn the fictional tragedy that befell les enfants into something really good. “Les enfants de Médée” is one longish (almost 32 minute) track that I would summarize as a dark, haunting, slow moving soundscape. It shape-shifts ever so slightly as it moves along, throwing in subtle dark industrial elements. I believe your reaction after listening will be anything but lukewarm.
“Amibozoaires” has a different inspiration. All the tracks are named after particular amoebozoa (I’ll let you scientists go down that rabbit hole on your own). This album has a familiar, but slightly different feel than “Les enfants de Médée.” It feels slow moving and dark, but is more dark ambient. There are deep, dark drones as the base for all these tracks, but interesting elements are mixed in. For example, after a somewhat calm opening track, “Physarum” adds some slight industrial elements that give the track a bit more of an edge. Or listen to “Badhania” which adds a slowly repeating heartbeat rhythm to the mix. Whatever their inspirations, MOCS has produced some excellent and interesting music.