A.Morgan continues to be a leading light in the Techno scene and this “The Lizard King” EP on BlackAxon is no exception, featuring deep, dark, and hypnotic grooves with a signature sound design that’s all his own.
A.Morgan has been on a serious tear recently and seemingly cannot be stopped. This time, he is featured on Jay Clarke’s BlackAxon label, who seems to be something of a Doors fan—with the title “The Lizard King” for this release and several of Clarke’s remix compilation releases attributed to the title “Riders of the Storm”—whether this is a tribute to Jim Morrison or not is really hard to say.
One thing for sure is that the sounds in “The Lizard King” EP are definitely of a character and quality that is intrinsic to A. Morgan. It’s not a certain wild style or unique approach; it’s the manner in which the sounds are treated that gives A. Morgan his voice. The darkness in the tone, the groove of the rhythm lines, and the choice of filtering really stands out to be something unique for him. Morgan stands within the formatting of Techno and pushes it forward his way. Listening to him is like listening to a musician expressing their own particular tone within an instrument. Many people can play a piano and a composition the same way, but there are only a few that really capture that certain rich tonality within how it’s expressed.
The filtering choices in Lizard King’s chords and how much decay is in the reverb, the coloring choices there, that’s all A.Morgan. Similarly “New Dawn” has a sinister flavor that could go way darker, but he reels it in a bit to keep control and stay within a hypnotic zone. As with “Jupiter Moon”, the bass and its EQing is all a choice that’s his. Another gem on this EQ would be the digital exclusive, “Night Raider”, which really sets a strong hypnotic set of grooving elements that really lets you forget the concept of time. The track Night Raider really lends itself to repeated listens since it’s so easy to get caught up in it or forget that you’ve had music on since it has a few levels of interest present with it, from causal background music to deep analysis.
A. Morgan’s rich tone, expression and deep and strong understanding of the principles of the framework techno has set forth, It should be easy to see A. Morgan take the lead in the coming years as a driving force within the scene.
-Sean Ocean
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