MORTIIS - Keiser Av En Dimensjon Ukjent LP (Brown Vinyl)

2019 repress, on "Northern Soil" vinyl. This press comes with an A2 poster. Limited to 450 copies

Mortiis' Keiser av en Dimensjon Ukjent is a journey into a fantasy world that accurately conveys the full extent of a young man's spiritual escape. It is the most successfully realized vision of the early years of Mortiis; afterward he would go on to much shorter and more whimsical musical ideas, and after that something completely different (and much more commercial). I'd go as far as to say that this is Mortiis' most spiritual work.

The theme is decay. This is clearly noticeable in the presentation of the VHS music video for the song Reisene til grotter og ødemarker, where we see prolonged images in a black-and-white landscape that change at a slow (epic?) pace in a manner matching the music, almost like a minimalist version of Koyaanisqatsi. The ideas are long and repetitive, utilizing a cheap synthesizer and the occasional amateurish choir voice by Mortiis himself. The timpani drums pound in slowly accompanied by a proud corpulent brass ensemble (by far the most noticeably cheesy instrument). The "cheese" is immensely important to the purpose of the music, the primitive quality of the sound creating a decaying atmosphere, removing it from all mainstream music, giving it the same "necro" feeling that would make black metal powerful, though in an entirely different quality.