I only came across Murfof a few months ago, and he's been recording for over twenty years at this point. I really feel like I've been missing out on a lot of excellent music. Everything I have heard from him has been quite different, but consistently excellent.
Martes and Utopia are the first and second full length releases under the Murcof banner. The Vinyl release is a bit curious here as well, the track order has been vastly shuffled form the original releases and the remixes first found on Utopia have been excluded.
Martes is a collection of songs that originate in the classical music genre. There is tasteful sampling of minimalist instrumentals played with violins, pianos, and other instruments that have been around for many many years contorted to the will of Murcof. The resultant melodies and textures are the augmented by heavy use of glitching and some rather unique percussion.
The percussion in particular is quite interesting to me. Instead of using a standard kick/snare/symbol setup, Murcof has created rhythm using part of the glitch soundscape. What would pass as a pulse for the music often cuts through the air like a knife instead of laying a deep foundation through a low pulse. It borders on noise levels of fuckery, but I find it quite enthralling and is one of my main draws to the album.
Utopia on the other hand decreases the beats and focuses more on the glitch and classical elements. I'm not sure glitch is even the right word anymore, the tones used are so incredibly ear piercing that it feels more like noise. The second album is decidedly less musical and focuses more on pure emotion through dark ambience and minimalism alongside the noise.
The way that the album is split up actually works quite well for me. If I didn't know any better I would think that this is just one long album as everything works together despite the large shift in style with Utopia.
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