Review Summary: Why do I enjoy this?
I find myself asking that a lot with ambient music. Why do I enjoy this music? Is it because it really is the best music out there? Well, no. It is hard to call it music. There is a lot of ambient out there with actual musical qualities, like Stars of the Lid’s and Their Refinement of the Decline, but then there is music like this, which is really just noise. Sure, it is dark ambient, which is a genre, I will admit, I am almost brand new to, but that still does not explain why this noise is so good. Maybe it is the way everything flows together and works. With ambient, the cogs just seem to mesh, even if none of the “music” is made with instruments.
Such is the case with Deathprod’s Morals and Dogma. This fifty-minute masterpiece is just noise; maybe not even that. The noise that goes on is really just long drones of notes made by a machine; there isn’t (technically) musical about it. Maybe Morals and Dogma is so enjoyable because it just seems to work. This album is not one you could buy a single song from the album and enjoy it. Although the songs overlap in no way, the songs would seem unfinished if they came up at a random time without the rest of the album. Each track starts slow, with maybe a single drone, or possibly complete silence. There are more and more drones added, until, towards the climax there would seem like nothing else could be added, then Deathprod adds more. The songs then wind down, again into nothing.
Unlike the other dark ambient artists, Deathprod’s music isn’t (as) scary. It feels like the background music to a horror movie, not a chase scene or a sex scene mind you, but an intense, dark scene. This is an album that one must immerse themselves into. One could not simply listen to this album walking to school or while doing homework. I suggest lying in bed, at night, with all the lights off. Not a single beam of light should seep through the door. Put headphones on (yes, this is a headphone-only album) then stare at the ceiling. Listen to the slow, long-tone-esque drones; you will slip away into the music, instead of having it as background noise. Listening to is in this manner will help with the understanding of what a great piece of “music” this is.
So put in your headphones, lay back, and enjoy this strange “music”.