Morwan
Vse po kolu, znovu
Feel It Records
A lot has surely changed for Alex Ashtaui at a personal level since the release of his one-man project Morwan’s stunning 2020 LP, Zolya-Zemya. War broke out in his native Ukraine, driving him to the relative safety of Berlin, where he’d write and release a pained and wounded response to that war and displacement, 2023’s Svitaye, Palaye. But beyond personal conjecture, the different between that record and new release Vse po kolu, znovu is a decisively musical one, with a new version of Ashtaui’s presentation of post-punk being introduced.
If you’ve tracked Morwan’s previous work it’s impossible to ignore the extra weight and muscle that’s been strapped on to its often lithe (yet still dark) post-punk compositions. The thudding mosh of pre-release single “Без обличчя” proves to have been an accurate precedent of things to come as we find out just 90 seconds into the record, when the already rough and tumble “Все по колу, знову” explodes into a thrashing breakdown of molten slag and rabid yowling. The simplest answer for the changes in sound found on Vse po kolu, znovu is that Morwan is now a formal duo, rather than a solo project for which Ashtaui would tap occasional collaborators. Still, Ashtaui remains credited with writing all music and lyrics on the record, and so it’s an open question as to what role the monymous Stefan has played in the development of this style.
Vse po kolu, znovu doesn’t mark a total break from Morwan’s past. Traces of the middle eastern folk traditions Ashtaui’s drawn upon can still be made out in the corners of “На схід”, with its driving, raga-like interpolative riffing. But more often than not, even when those sounds are reprised, they’re presented with a new style of haze and distortion, as on “Остання мить” and “Мої дні”, perhaps the sort of tunes the promo copy is referring to when it mentions shoegaze as an influence. Speaking editorially, it’s welcome news that Astaui hasn’t opted for a safer or more sanitized approach while rethinking Morwan’s use of rock instrumentation; lord knows it would have been easy enough to try to follow Molchat Doma’s path to algorithmic success as so many of that act’s pale imitators have done. Instead, the grime, gristle, and shear meanness of Vse po kolu, znovu connotes far less digestible fare: the tight wind of Big Black, the thudding swagger of The Jesus Lizard.
The record’s title translates as “All in a circle, again”, a phrase which oddly suits and runs against the album at the same time. If it refers to the looping manner in which Ashtaui and co. use repetition as a means of building the hypnotic, trance-like state so much of Morwan’s best music is capable of inducing, then it’s hard to imagine a better title. But if it refers to Morwan’s work on the whole, or Ashtaui’s creative process, then it’s decidedly ill-suited: the means by which the rarified and difficult to describe mood of Morwan’s music is achieved feel very fresh here.
