Minimalist music has always been hit or miss with me. It is so very rarely executed correctly. A perfect minimalist album is well thought out, with style and great musicianship loitering subtly on the edges. It should have an almost hypnotizing effect on the listener. To ask for all these things from an album in this genre may be too much on my part, but anything less simply translates into nothing but meaningless spurts of noise. Morok by Wogulow, Taroutz, Vermo is a very definitive miss.

The album starts poorly with a bunch of un-accessible tracks. The chief abuser is the opener, "Cement." This is not a horrible track per se, as the atmospheric noises that begin the song create an interesting opening. The last half of the track goes against this good start, however, with rather painful high-pitched screeches and an odd double bass. This is an unfortunate trait that continues along throughout the whole album. They continually use the remarkably similar structure (structure being a loose term of course) of off-putting ambient noise, finishing off with a strange melody on piano in the second half of the track.

I was hoping for some sort of mood, something to connect with and get involved with, but I kept being ejected by what seemed like random passages of noise."Sopromat" shows what this band were trying to do in the first place , and oddly enough, it is effective. It begins with a dark atmosphere of odd noises as usual, but builds on this with great percussion and a glitchy vocal melody. It does not stop and start like the other songs, it continues and sustains the subtle melody and rhythm in an engrossing way.

The key to the above song's success was the lack of interruption by seemingly random noises and percussion that seem to break up the flow of every other track on the CD. In fact, even without this interruption there is very little musical material. I understand minimalism is going to include sprawling compositions; however I expect some melodies in there somewhere. Taking "Sopromat" out of the equation, I'm afraid Morok sounds stale and un-engaging. I'm sure Alexie Taroutz is a talented musician, but not much is shown on this record.

-Idris Hussain