- Mohammad is a Greek trio armed with a double bass, a cello and a third member on "oscillators." Individually, all three musicians have years of experience and lengthy discographies, and it shows in the singular focus and highly refined execution of this project. Put simply, Mohammad create drone music, great monolithic slabs of sonic matter that move in stately unison, occasionally swooping down to bowel-quaking depths. One on level it's a clinical exploration of frequencies, each harmonic movement slow and methodical, as if they're exploring the acoustics of a space. On another, it's poetic music, variously evoking a gothic sort of dread ala Sunn O))) or the desolate open spaces of the Constellation Records stable.
Som Sakrifis is the trio's third album, and their first for PAN. "Sakrifis" opens things in fine style, its carefully measured pauses and sudden changes in tone revealing an ear for more involved structures than the "drone" tag might suggest. "Lapli," meanwhile, is slightly more redemptive in tone, though its central chord progression is buried in a murky bed of bow-on-string groans. At one point a pure oscillator tone spirals up into the higher register, wheeling mournfully above the strings, but for the most part this is richly organic music, the synthetic tones submerged in the mix, there only to bolster fundamental frequencies.
"Sakrifis" and "Lapli" feel about as punchy and concise as drone ever could, packing a lot of detail into their seven- and eight-minute runtimes. "Liberig Min," meanwhile, is a daunting 17-minute counterbalance. It's a deliciously baleful beast, the thick string textures periodically dropping out to leave a single forlorn note—sampled birdsong perhaps—hanging in the air. The pacing, though, is glacial, and in abandoning concision Mohammad lose one of their more appealing attributes.
Tracklist01. Sakrifis
02. Lapli
03. Liberig Min