Morgan Delt
Phase Zero

At the beginning, I was uncertain about whether to write about Morgan Delt's new album. The musician and sculptor from Los Angeles, California, released this new album on August 26th, and since then I've listened to it several times in what has been a sort of investigative process. A kind of investigation. Indeed, I couldn't convince myself in any way about the album's contents and sounds. Initially, I thought there might be a kind of trap hidden among the notes of the album's ten songs, but in the end, I had to surrender and wave the white flag.

Morgan Delt is undoubtedly one of the most regarded entities within the neo-psychedelic music scene. His previous self-titled album, released in 2014 on the wonderful Trouble In Mind Records label, is truly a little gem in the genre, a crazy, psychedelic, kaleidoscopic gem. A record that must have evidently been greatly appreciated both by critics and the public, giving him what Indiana Jones would have described as 'fortune and glory.' So, in the end, Morgan Delt signed a contract with a major and important label like Sub Pop Records in Seattle, Washington, and released his second album, entitled 'Phase Zero', of which, before proceeding with any analysis and discussion, I immediately want to highlight the incredible beauty of the cover, the work of artist Oliver Hibert.

So, as you can imagine, another thing that made me doubt whether to write this review is precisely the fact that the album was released through Sub Pop. I mean, I had no intention of writing a bunch of old rubbish like, 'Damn, this guy first made a great album, then had success, signed with an important label, and here's his new album, which is simply crap!' Something that sounds as if Morgan Delt were a 'sell-out' or that he somehow betrayed his audience and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for fame and money. All things that, honestly, I consider a bunch of nonsense and, in any case, don't interest me, they are useless for a discussion on the content and quality of the album.

An album that, on the other hand, I can only describe as bad. 'Phase Zero' is simply a bad album, or, however you want to look at it, I imagine it certainly doesn't work as well as Morgan Delt would have hoped, and who knows how much of this is due to all the desire and attempts to experiment with new sounds.

Recorded in his Topanga Canyon Studio and then mastered by JJ Golden, Morgan Delt initially draws inspiration, of course, from the typical LA-style psychedelia to then move towards more experimental and modern horizons, but his steps appear immediately uncertain, so much so that I suppose he lost his compass or embarked without it, inevitably getting lost and starting to move in circles inside a dark forest in the heart of a stormy night.

From the very first track, 'Don't Wanna See What's Happening Outside', apparently a good intro, a song that could be described as a complacent indie-psychedelic track, it's evident that the album's sounds are mostly disjointed and confused, many times even inconsistent. Lacking any concrete content or substance.

'The System of 1,000 Lies' has a supposedly 'strong' attack and gives for a moment the illusion of an immediate pick-up, but it's useless to deceive ourselves. The entire song, like the majority of others on the album, is practically absolutely repetitive, a repetition of entire 'blocks' based on repeating the same pattern or the same guitar arpeggio. A scheme taken up multiple times, starting with the evocative 'Sun Powers', whose sounds are somewhat very nineties and conclude with a kind of drizzling slow crash of glassware. 'The Age of Birdman' apparently resumes the exact same arpeggio of the previous song, which adds an atmosphere that I would define as 'thrilling', achieved with the contribution of elements like loop drums and almost dubstep (?) to the point of sounding like a Radiohead song! A sensation also felt when listening to 'Mssr. Monster'. The sound somehow tries to be paranoid and obviously repetitive (it succeeds very well in this) with some scattered traces of attempts at acceleration that otherwise don't give the songs any particular cue or added value.

'A Gun Appears', a kind of ballad alternating between arpeggios and acoustic guitar chords, 'The Lowest of The Low', an indistinct sequence of ghosts or specters, are probably the two worst songs on the album: the former is objectively a bad song; the latter makes no sense. It's practically not a song. 'Escape Capsule' is a slow psychedelic ballad recorded with a lot of echo and reverb to create a cloudy atmosphere that makes listening impractical.

Finally, let's say I consider 'Another Person' a good pop-psychedelic song, but in another context it would have been a 'filler' song and certainly not the so-called highlight of the album, while the last track of the album, 'Some Sunsick Day', nevertheless seems to emerge from the heap and all this confusion, ending up being unpredictably even fun and somewhat sunny.

In theory, I have nothing else to add about this album. Probably, but this is just my personal opinion on 'Phase Zero', Morgan Delt wanted to make a very particular album, a psychedelic music album that at the same time had something undefined like, I don't know, Jandek's songs: confused psychedelic ballads. In some way, let's say he succeeded in his intent. But probably, by trying to experiment too much in the search for particular and suggestive sounds, he ended up literally destroying his work with his own hands: his songs are literally vaporized. They have disappeared. They are largely repetitive, but lacking any grip on the listener and never truly hypnotic at the right point; the voice has no particular characteristic, it's not evocative and doesn't impact the listener, it appears even as something indistinct and in any case separate from everything else, while those experimentations in sound with electronic and artificial elements, in my opinion, don't work at all. I don't know. I think I really have nothing else to say at this point. Maybe a bunch of mistakes were made even in the production phase. Ultimately, this album could also be defined as a kind of enigma posing a big question: where the hell is Morgan Delt? I ask. Because, listening to this album, I can't hear him.