Album Review

Heavenly Creatures – Morts Sures

17th Jun 2010

French artist Dr. Ohm has impressed with his breadth of classical music understanding and the way in which he weaves it into song on previous releases like New Blood parts I and II. The musical journey continues – and is never the same as before.

“Morts Sures” is an instrumental EP (although at 10 tracks we’d argue it was an album) designed to be the musical accompaniment/soundtrack to a book of the same name published in France. But there are no rules to the listening of the music (As we don’t have the book over here as yet) – It is just as easy to listen to this without any awareness of the text in which it was composed for.

But it is clear that you are listening to a soundtrack when you put it on. The music is highly effective being unsettling, gloomy in places and even eventful. Dr. Ohm has deliberately used organic orchestral sound which is something that can only aid such a work. Synthesizers can act as a wonderful blueprint for some music –n but sometimes you need to record the real thing and it really pays off.

HC work is often compared to Soundtrack material and Morts Sures takes it much further in that direction. With this material to hand Dr. Ohm would have no problem picking up work should the right project come along. But as he is darkly inclined to the gothic and fantastical sounding edge – perhaps a quick call to the Final Fantasy type RPG people might be a good place to start.
The album works best as a whole as you feel a narrative at work. It is at one moment playful – the next sinister. Creating a mood is not something this artist will ever have a problem with.

But I hope he doesn’t stay away from song making for too long. There are far too many great sounds going on in his head and they can easily be applied to both soundtrack work as well as songs.