In this day and age when home studios are becoming more widespread and accessible, we’re seeing a huge amount of new music released literally every day. Artists no longer need the approval of a label, publisher, or even producer – a lot of bands quite simply fill these roles themselves. In many ways, and as a member of bands who have self-released albums, I think this is fantastic; artists are no longer as limited by whether the people with the money like their music, and that’s objectively a good thing (because music is, first and foremost, personal expression). However, it also means that often, a band’s music suffers, whether that be due to a lack of external input, thus resulting in songs that may not be as refined as they could be, or a lack of knowledge on how to make their music actually sound good from an audio engineering point of view. It also means we end up with so much music (again, not inherently a bad thing).
I don’t want to sound like some sort of snob here. I truly believe every single song created from some place of passion or emotion is valid, unique, and has merit in some way, shape, or form. I don’t have to enjoy a song to appreciate where it came from or what it’s trying to say. As long as I can hear some sort of intent, and I can hear that the artist(s) expressed whatever they wanted to express, I consider the song successful. I released a solo EP a while back and I couldn’t have cared less if anyone listened to it, and much less if they liked it. I made it for me, and even though there are things I would change about it if I did it again, I know what I was trying to convey and I believe I succeeded. It was what felt right at the time, and I’ll stand by that, even if the execution was – admittedly – pretty rough. Anyway, I digress.
What I’m getting to is this: with so much music being released all the time (awesome), there is no way in hell anyone is ever going to get to listen to all of it (less awesome, but just a fact), and so therefore a lot of great music won’t get anywhere near the recognition it deserves (very sad). Because almost anyone can now record and release their own music, the remarkable often gets lost just due to the sheer mass of music being released; needles in a nearly endless haystack.
Moiii’s self-titled debut album is the needle I didn’t know I was looking for. Before I heard it, it had been a long time since I’d heard an album that I struggled to categorise. Normally I’m pretty quick to slap some genre labels on a band in my reviews, draw comparisons to other artists, point out specific tropes of the style they’re playing in. Moiii challenged that. It’s not often I can say ‘I’ve never heard something like this before’, but I can do it now. I have never heard something like Moiii before.
If I had to specify the genres of Moiii, I would say experimental, industrial, ambient, and doom, and I’d still have given an extremely shallow and boxed-in description of them that doesn’t do the album any justice. Moiii is extremely fluid while also being somehow rigid, industrial while being viscerally human, and so organic for an album that’s so electronic. The word that comes to mind over and over when I listen to this album is ritualistic. Ritualistic in the way a factory is ritualistic, some sort of cyber-punk deus ex machina; in the way night and day and weather and seasons are ritualistic; in the way cultural rites are ritualistic. It’s nature and slow growth, it’s the grinding away of that nature with machines, it’s a deification of – something. There’s awe and indifference, exploration and habit, advancement and ancient tradition.
Okay, that’s the wishy-washy, New Age portion of my review done for now. Let’s take a closer look at these songs.
The opening track, “Tangled Chords”, states the album’s intent straight off the bat. A metallic melody, created from sounds that could be bells or could be anvils, rings out above a bed of distorted noise, overlaid with moaning guitar bends, and punctuated by various intertwining percussion layers. It creates so strongly a sense of antiquity drenched in the ceaseless grinding of the present or near future, something that happens over and over on Moiii. Before we have time to settle into this strange, disjointed world, everything stops, only to come back filthier, thicker, more threatening. Dense new layers are added, the harmony shifts and changes unsettlingly around us, and everything crushes in harder and harder around the incessant original melody, until the cogs grind to a halt and we’re left with nothing but an odd, undulating static. This is what Moiii have created – anticipation without release, a room with invisible walls, an era that’s impossible to place. I knew from the first time I heard “Tangled Chords” that Moiii was going to become an obsession.
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh” shows a different side of Moiii altogether. Slow and somewhat mournful, layers of guitars open this song, one chanting a simple melodic line while others shiver and chatter in the background. The melody shifts until it’s almost freeform, the feeling of an improvised, rambling prayer into the abyss. By the time the drums join, the vibe is wholly immersive. Amen, amen, intones our solo guitar, before a wall of distortion rises up from the depths. The song becomes massive, a canyon of pluming riffs and scattered noise. Meditative, “Shhhhhhhhhhhhh” opens wide, pulsing and expanding, squeezing gently at the sides, pushing at the seams, before it holds a breath and exhales. Much ado about nothing, but also about everything at once.
The rude awakening from the reverie of “Shhhhhhhhhhhhh”, “You Won’t Be Alive to Feel It”, is probably my favourite track on the album. Opening with what sounds like a pot being smacked with a whisk, this song soon becomes a throbbing, (literally) breathing beast. It’s a massive, monotonous guitar chug with a backbone of tribal drumming and punctuated by sharp inhales and exhales. The breathing is the closest we get to vocals on this album, and it adds a lashing of anxiety and nervous tension, but it’s also an ostinato in itself. As is so often the case on Moiii, “You Won’t Be Alive to Feel It” has one main melody, a rubbery synth line, which adds a kind of video game feel to the track, but doesn’t stick around nearly long enough to get used to it before the song dissolves into shuddering guitars, ferocious percussion, and the mantric breathing. There’s something infectious and tantalising about this track’s dark simplicity, its adrenaline-fuelled doom, that I just find utterly irresistible.
To some, Moiii and the songs on it may seem anticlimactic, without strong builds or release or coherent narrative. At a glance, there’s not much tying the songs on the album together, and yet, they fit, they belong. For sure, I could wallow in almost all of the tracks for at least twice as long as Moiii allow me to, just soaking in the atmosphere, but I also like the sort of in-and-out approach – by the time you think you understand, the moment is gone, and something is just left unsaid; implied, but not made explicit. There’s a kind of unnerving implicit drama to Moiii, something bubbling away in the background, never coming out of the shadows, a hint of a memory at the back of your mind.
I honestly love every track on this album for different reasons, and I would love to write a paragraph about each song, but as always, I believe in keeping the mystery alive. Moiii only has six tracks; to discuss more than half would seem like I was deconstructing it too much. I highly recommend finding time for this album – go to a place where you can be alone, preferably somewhere dark, even better if it’s outside, and just let it happen. Moiii is one of the greatest musical meditations I’ve heard, a true testament to creativity, humanity, and technology. Do not sleep on this.
