Album Review: Octo Octa – Between Two Selves

Listening to Between Two Selves, the new album from Brooklyn producer Michael Morrison (aka Octo Octa) out on the 100% Silk label, is like stepping into a cool electronic current and letting all manner of liquescent sounds and synths gently submerge you. The opening track “Who will I become?” plays as an underwater seduction, whose rippling moodiness and rattling house percussion softly ushers you into a large nocturnal space. The club-house stylings of “Please Don’t Leave” and “Bad Blood” pulse with subdued beats and conjure mirage-like ambiances full of pin-drop synths flitting to and fro. “Come Closer” undulates slowly and somberly to begin with, before ascending to a synth-sprayed club-floor climax. Enlivened jungle-grooves are unveiled in “His Kiss” while “Work Me” hits hard with a club-beat. The finale “Fear” works up more complex emotions with dark textures and strangulated vocal samples. Appropriately it closes to the ambiance of pouring rain, as though one must make an effort to emerge from the aqueous hypnotism of this strange and chimeric underworld.