FACT mix 291: Morphosis

FACT mix 291: Morphosis

Call us unimaginative, but Lebanon isn’t the first place we associate with electronic music, nor indeed the 31st. But it’s where Rabih Beaini a.k.a. Morphosis was born and reared. Heavily involved in music even as a little nipper, he moved to Italy in 1996, and come the new millennium started releasing music as Morphosis, primarily through his own Morphine Records label.

His sinuous, cerebral house and techno confections were brought to a wider international audience when picked up for release by Aroy Dee’s Netherlands-based M>O>S Records. The ‘Cetrik’ (2009) and ‘Running Out’ (2010) 12″s caught the attention of dedicated dance-pickers, but it was the arrival earlier this year of Morphosis’s What We Have Learned LP – a co-release from Morphine, Delsin and M>O>S – that made him the talk of the (world) town.

Undoubtedly one of the electronic LPs of the year, What We Have Learned classily reconciles the experimental and the dancefloor-effective, the abstract and the immediate; influences include post-punk and krautrock, but these broken down and absorbed into the very bloodstream of the music, rather than worn like external accessories. You need only look at the calibre of remixer that the work has attracted: namely Newworldaquarium and Just For One Day (an occasional alias of Torsten ‘T++’ Profrock).

Ahead of his appearance at the Elevate festival in Graz, Austria (alongside Chez Damier, Deepchord, Move and more), Morphosis has put together a hugely enjoyable and substantial mix of chicaning techno and gritty electronics, starring Jeff Mills, Ekoplekz, Traversable Wormhole, Marcel Dettmann and Container. You know what to do.

Tracklist:
DJ Rum – Mountains part 2 & 3 [2nd Drop]
DJ Sotofett – Asis (part2) [Acido Records]
Marcel Dettmann – Barrier [Ostgut Ton]
Answer Code Request – Escape Myself [Answer Code Request]
Steve Moore – Volatile Memory (Altered) [Future Times]
Spekter – Pipe Bomb [Sound Signature]
Steve Moore – Frigio [Long Island Electrical Systems]
Jeff Mills – Mouzon [Purpose Maker]
Ekoplekz – Stahlman Gas [Punch Drunk]
Container – Application [Spectrum Spools]
X2 – Modem [Nation]
Abdulla Rashim – Asayita 1 [Abdulla Rashim]
Traversable Wormhole – A Four Dimensional Manifold [Traversable Wormhole Vol 8]
Francois X – Code Red (Marcel Dettmann Remix) [DeeplyRootedHouse]
Traversable Wormhole – Transducer [Traversable Wormhole Vol 1]
Bene Gesserit – BaiSeR D’aMouR Edit [Onderstroom Records]