GOD IS GOD

Metamorphoses is the debut album by electronic duo God is God for Hamburg-based imprint Bureau B. The duo consists of Turkish musician, producer and Kinship label founder Etkin Çekin and Belarussian multi-instrumentalist, composer singer and Not Not Fun alumni Galina Ozeran who started making music after a chance meeting in Berlin in 2015. Metamorphoses is the product of their second ever improvisational encounter: an undulating, avant-pop journey of low-BPM twists and turns guided by Ozeran's synthesizers, Russian and English vocals and Çekin's ethereal production and guitar sensibility. Central to the album's musical narrative are both contemporary dancefloor-adjacent electronics and Eastern European and Turkish psychedelic electronic traditions – all filtered through the prism of Çekin and Ozeran's respective musical histories.

Ozeran grew up in Vitebsk, Belarus playing classical piano before making her way to St. Petersburg to study curation and become a musician. There she formed various bands and began the lo-fi improvisational dream-pop solo project Chikiss, influenced by Soviet synth pioneers Eduard Artemiev and Alexander Zatcepin as well as American film composer Angelo Badelamenti, Laurie Anderson, and early Warp records. On Metamorphoses, this is reflected in her narcotic melody lines and sung "liquid language" – a kind of improvisational, non-semantic vocalization, which combines fluidly with Çekin's sonic vision. The latter was honed in both Istanbul and Germany and draws equally on the sounds of Bülent Arel, Erkan Oğur and Turkish 90s indie-experimental band ZEN as well as Roedelius, La Düsseldorf and Suicide.

The result of Çekin and Ozeran's collaboration is both measured and electric. Things start slow with billowing, amorphous chord clouds in opener "Behind The Heroes" before setting off into the foundational groove of "The Song Pt. 1", which tunnels forward, bass-first, into dark disco territory. This soon leads into album single "The Song Pt. 2", a continuation of the previous groove cleverly revisited with Ozeran's dynamic vocalizing and seductive, dubbed-out sibilance. From here things open up into the wide vistas and droning, string-heavy soundscapes of "Masha Marie" and "Dream", interspersed by the almost new age FM synth work of "Liquid Space" and "Drops".

By the time the huge melancholic dance closer "Song To The Siren" sounds it's final notes, the impulse is to start the journey all over again. It's a testament to not only GiG's improvisational chops, but also to their Teo Macero-like additional editing process by Sebastian Lee Philip (Die Wilde Jagd) of condensing a cloud of improvisation into a narrative, 40 minutes of bliss – and multiple modes of psychedelia.

- Alexander James Samuels