Mortaja - discography
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In preparation for this year’s WGT EBM Warm-Up, I delved deep into the sonic catalogue of Mortaja - a project that has, over time, evolved from introspective dark ambient into something far more textured and alive. What Mortaja offers is not simply music and storytelling, but architecture and atmosphere that surrounds, coats, and infiltrates. There’s a striking consistency to Mortaja’s work - a careful balance between control and emotion, hypnosis and sharpness. Influences like Lustmord or Ah Cama-Sotz are present, but Mortaja doesn’t mimic; instead, it channels their meditative weight and sculpts it into his own tactile spaces.
The album "Drown in Blood" is among the darkest releases in audiophob’s catalogue - a dense, subterranean procession of tones and pulses that never reach for drama but instead create tension through gravitational slowness. These are sounds born in silence, disturbed only by breath-like rhythms and subtle melodic fractures. It feels less like listening and more like being pulled into a gravitational field.
"Bone Chamber" furthers this language with a slightly more melodic, yet still deeply shadowed palette. What emerges here is a quiet intensity - rhythmic elements that move like ossified echoes, with layered detail that functions almost like a sonic circulatory system. There is reflection, but never stillness; the compositions suggest movement through abandoned cathedrals of memory.
Then comes "Combined Minds" - a shift, not in philosophy, but in kinetic energy. This is Mortaja in motion. The tone becomes bolder, more insistent. Rhythms take shape in the direction of EBM and techno, but always filtered through a cinematic lens — mechanical, textured, and purposefully unpolished. The remixes, including contributions from Greyhound and Suki, do not depart from the source - rather, they refract it through new tensions.
Together, these three albums document a journey: from slow-burning ritualism to lucid, pulsating structure. Mortaja does not aim to entertain. He builds spaces for us to disappear into - places where darkness isn’t decoration, but a living element.
The album "Drown in Blood" is among the darkest releases in audiophob’s catalogue - a dense, subterranean procession of tones and pulses that never reach for drama but instead create tension through gravitational slowness. These are sounds born in silence, disturbed only by breath-like rhythms and subtle melodic fractures. It feels less like listening and more like being pulled into a gravitational field.
"Bone Chamber" furthers this language with a slightly more melodic, yet still deeply shadowed palette. What emerges here is a quiet intensity - rhythmic elements that move like ossified echoes, with layered detail that functions almost like a sonic circulatory system. There is reflection, but never stillness; the compositions suggest movement through abandoned cathedrals of memory.
Then comes "Combined Minds" - a shift, not in philosophy, but in kinetic energy. This is Mortaja in motion. The tone becomes bolder, more insistent. Rhythms take shape in the direction of EBM and techno, but always filtered through a cinematic lens — mechanical, textured, and purposefully unpolished. The remixes, including contributions from Greyhound and Suki, do not depart from the source - rather, they refract it through new tensions.
Together, these three albums document a journey: from slow-burning ritualism to lucid, pulsating structure. Mortaja does not aim to entertain. He builds spaces for us to disappear into - places where darkness isn’t decoration, but a living element.
Discography:
"Drown in Blood" — released 2011, audiophob (auphcd015)
https://audiophob.bandcamp.com/album/drown-in-blood
"Bone Chamber" — released 2014, audiophob (auphcd021)
https://audiophob.bandcamp.com/album/bone-chamber-2
"Combined Minds" — released 2018, audiophob (auphcd027)
https://audiophob.bandcamp.com/album/combined-minds
