seht - the green morning
Digitalis CD, 2006
"New Zealand's seht (AKA Stephen Clover) has spawned a musical monster around one consistent idea: that simplicity can be the most mind-expanding drug around. Over the course of a dozen releases on labels like Last Visible Dog and Celebrate Psi-Phenomenon, Clover has perfected this artform. Using a minimal array of instruments and effects, he sculpts every sound source he can find into soothing walls of aural bliss. Doing more with less is rarely done better than this.
The Green Morning is seht's third proper CD release, and comes on the heels of a series of limited CD-Rs. Through his ability to synthesize a seemingly endless array of sounds into a single, focused point, seht acts as a modern composer in the same vein as William Basinski. Clover's drones have explored various territory through the past few years, everything from glacial ambience to desconstructed blues. The Green Morning is like the early moments of dawn, bathed in warm plumes of sonic sunlight. These songs are the memories trapped beneath the floorboards, and by looking back Clover offers a mere glimpse into the ambience of a not-so-distant future."
- Digitalis website
Placed #3 on Top 10 Albums of 2006 list, in Portugese music 'zine Trinta de Fevereiro.
What they said...
"More long-form shape-shifting drones from Stephen Clover that seep into your consciousness like a sea mist that before long has completely engulfed you. Seht's music always has a disturbing undercurrent and the poisonous enclosed breath of "Way in the Middle of the Air" is a fine example of this. Recommended as ever."
- Apex-online 'Boa Melody Bar' website
"Another amazing sonic document from one of our favorite sound makers, NZ outfit Seht, aka dronelord Stephen Clover. The Green Morning picks up right where the recently reviewed Federacy Boot left off. If anything it's even darker and dreamier, which is quite a task considering how much we dug the last one. Opening the proceedings is a gorgeously lugubrious soundscape of slow subterranean rumbles, a glacial low end shimmer, that gradually begins to allow dreamy song fragments to surface, just barely breaking the surface, before slowly going under again, a droning dreamlike voyage across a thick fuzzy sonic sea. In fact the first three tracks here all sort of follow the same template: a lengthy barely shifting slab of densely layered deep dark drones, while beneath all sorts of random melodic fragments and sonic debris drift and bob. Almost like a thirty minute three part epic. The second to last track is less droney as it is dreamy, the bulk of the song is a murky melody, smeared into a shape so indistinct it almost does become a drone, but somehow hovers just this side, very underwater sounding, almost like a slowed down Oval, with a strange slow motion rhythm picked out by a sporadic glitchy crunch, like footsteps on gravel. The final track is a 20 minute epic, that returns to the sonic theme of the opening trilogy, but manages to go even deeper and slower and more abstract, delivering a delicate drone that barely shifts, just sort of pulses gently, the whole thing wrapped in a barely there layer of sparkling static."
"When an album is described as being ‘recorded in the fog of autumn’ I must say it gets me more than just a little intrigued. It shouldn’t have surprised me that when i finally listened to this cd i was treated to almost an hour of Gas or Thomas Koner-style spacious, droning ambience. The music perfectly sums up the fog of an alien planet, dense gasses and heavy atmospheres slowly creeping into your mind as hisses, creaks and crystalline tones fill your very being. It really doesn’t get much more evocative than this, the music practically conjures landscapes as it plays – the deep organs and fuzzy synthesizers breathing life into your imagination’s most daring visions and memories. I really can’t think of a better way to induce some very colourful dreams indeed, so lie back and take in the glorious soundscapes, the fog is rolling in."
"Those Digitalis releases just keep getting better and better and they've hit yet another peak with this superb album. Seht provide a soothing, drifting soundscape for you to enjoy and although it never gets too challenging, there are some lovely moments that break up the sheer depth of the drones and textures. Much more electronic than previous releases on the label and, all in all, one of my faves so far. Wonderful."
"Although the front cover of The Green Morning shows a dense forest at dawn, the photo on the back of the sleeve reveals a red plain of Mars and it is from here where Seht draws his muse. Almost an hour of mega drones impose the oppressive atmosphere of an alien world upon the listener, such as on the monolithic "Olympus Mons", fifteen minutes that befit the grand Martian mountain from which it takes its name."
"I can’t remember where I read this but apparently the Russian language uses the same word for sleep and dream, somehow suggesting it’s pretty pointless to be asleep if not combined with some surrealistic dreams. Listening to New Zealand’s Seht (AKA Stephen Clover) makes me think of all this as the addition and subtraction of the different sound layers seems to be there just to pull us into some half-awake, half-asleep dream world. Barely there, extremely minimal melodies glide through drifting fogbanks of slow-bleeding drones. I can’t really decide if the results are ominous or if they’re actually subtle, graceful and quite beautiful. Maybe it’s really as simple as what we get on The Green Morning is ominous and overwhelming at loud volumes, genuinely soothing and even quite spiritual when toned down. No matter if I choose turn it up loud or use this disc as distant background music while putting my daughter to bed it strikes me as some of the most gorgeous soundscapes I’ve heard this year. Comes highly recommended to fans of Steve Reich, William Basinski, Popul Vuh and Labradford."
- Mats Gustafsson, The Broken Face
"While I often harp on ambient releases that evoke no emotion in their listeners, it is true that “emotion” does not necessarily have to be the goal for an ambient release. In the case of Seht’s The Green Morning, the detachment is palpable, not to mention entirely intentional. What The Green Morning inspires, rather than a feeling or a mood, is something more concrete: It inspires vision, a picture of the world — or perhaps, in this case, a world — that perhaps we don’t get to see every day. The Green Morningis about empty space, barren metallic wastelands, and post-nuclear landscapes. The sense of emptiness in Seht’s work on this release is, in fact, so prominent as to become an instrument unto itself, even as there are very few moments that are necessarily silent. Opening track “Valles Marineris” features a low-pitched, ominous drone throughout, the final stages, perhaps, of some unspeakable tragedy, while everything else deals with the aftermath. “Olympus Mons” has faint metallic percussion throughout, the final remnants of life, while the remaining three tracks are largely built around static and silence, with only a few identifiably “musical” elements added for the sake of giving the listener something to identify with. The Green Morning is absolutely one of the finest ambient works I’ve heard this year, not for the emotion it squeezes out of its listeners, but for the fascination it inspires."
- Mike Schiller, PopMatters website
"Inspired by a German audiobook of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, the tracks on this album suitably evoke contact with distant landscapes that may or may not be inhabited. An eerie otherness pervades these songs, as if anxiously awaiting the arrival of alien emissaries. Although at first it may seem as if the drone-heavy songs on this album are fairly static, closer listening reveals turbulent nuances unfolding beneath the surface. In "Valles Marineris," it's as if some scientific reconnaissance device is transmitting data streams in the background, providing statistical information to complement the mixture of awe and unease. "Olympus Mons" contributes some light mechanical rhythms and a brief, repeating harmony before the ambient soundscape converges once again. The atmosphere builds throughout this track like a dense, aural fog in which shapes dart in the mist, just beyond reach. A rhythmic pulse also infiltrates "Way in the Middle of the Air," but rhythm finally dominates in "Cydonia" with a loop that could have been created with battered rocks. As a counterpart, two alternating tones emerge to form a semblance of melody. The last track, "Chryse Planitia," is the most exhausting at nearly 20 minutes in length, but it also has the most rewarding complexity. Starting with a sort of sticky static, the familiar overtones appear but this time they're accompanied by a delicate mirage of shimmering microtones. A commanding machine-like swath overpowers the others, pulling the song toward a conclusion. There's quite a bit seething underneath the main sounds here that, as is the case with the other tracks, benefit by a bit of volume. There's no such thing as static motion on this disc. Like the best ambient music, each track here constantly evolves, transporting us as far off-planet as they're willing to go. "
"The Green Morning's front cover shows early morning sunlight breaking through the barren trees of a forest while its back depicts a pink-hued image capture of Mars' surface—natural analogues to the release's equally earthbound and ethereal sonic material. The third proper CD release from Drone Minimalist extraordinaire seht (New Zealand-based Stephen Clover) impresses on many counts, not the least of which is Clover's disdain for cheap effects and dramatics. After the 10-minute gloomscape “Valles Marineris” begins the album strongly with a slowly intensifying and receding industrial churn, “Olympus Mons” initially seems perhaps a bit too uneventful to justify its quarter-hour duration, but Clover remains faithful to the music's spirit and the listener gradually attunes him/herself to its glacial unfurl. The churning “Way in the Middle of the Air” and ambient “Cydonia” offer brief episodes of contemplation before the 20-minute “Chryse Planitia” lifts off. Softly humming like a well-oiled factory machine, the almost imperceptibly mutating setting revisits, if more subtly, the escalating drone concept of “Valles Marineris,” embedding it this time within a mass of entirely different character, a drifting sea of prickly crackle and shimmering tones that intersect and flow into one another. Clover cites Olivier Messiaen, Terry Riley, Tony Conrad, Faust, Stars of the Lid, and others as influences but, while each might individually shadow Clover's pieces, you'll hear little direct reference to any one of them on The Green Morning. Clover goes his own way, carving out his own carefully delineated path through the droning thickets of his chosen genre. "
"[...] The Green Morning exists in a very different place, sonically and thematically. Turning the New Zealander’s newest CD over, the photo of the dry-red Mars landscape refigures the sunrise of the Earthy cover not as the only other body, but one of many seeing us through the trees. Where Nirmala finds introspection in this world, Seht shows us a bigger picture. Each track on the disc focuses on a single repeating theme, with subtle variations throughout the cycles. Built upon huge, cresting drones, the tracks play out abstract patterns of simultaneously soothing yet menacing shape; like a Buddha machine built of a wind-tunnel, the sound fills the room and churns the air from the speakers. After thirty minutes, three tracks of this tension – “Valles Marineris”, “Olympus Mons”, and “Way in the Middle of the Air” - relax into the unexpectedly playful “Cydonia” – only to swell again in the immense “Chryse Planitia” for the final twenty. This is science fiction music of Clarke and Sagan vision; eclipsing Earth and a little scary for it."
"[...] It's hard to say what seht uses, instrument wise, but we are promised this is a very minimal line up. Perhaps an organ and some effects, and perhaps some sort of computer processing? Who knows, maybe it's even less. The end result is of course that what matters here, and that is quite nice. Very much along the lines of the UK counterparts such as Mirror and Monos and with a strong nod towards William Basinski, mainly due the somewhat grainy sound he uses. Seht uses many layers of sound, which he peals off and show us during the course of the piece. He shows us a bit, then shows another bit, then the first bit again, slightly changed and then a third part and so on. Changes are of course minimal and sparse, but throughout it all sounds great. In terms of drone music perhaps nothing much news under the sun, but Seht created some very solid pieces of drone music."
- Franz De Waard, VitalWeekly website
"If you are like me, sometimes you wanna break free from the ball and chain of the 4/4 beat. Smear a slow moving, microtonal drone between your ears and just, y’know, unwind. The problem for me is that this stuff can be a bit cold and glacial. The world is cold enough already, so try the latest release by Wellington’s Seht, a.k.a. Stephen Clover, The Green Morning. Maybe it’s space of the Pac rim... the heat and smell of tar, but the beats are minimal and the cinematic sweep of drone, static and distant winds bring to mind slowly shifting sand and not slowly moving fields of ice. If that makes any sense, then fill your canteen and let’s go."
- Rumbles (October '06 edition), Terrascope website
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