Mortiis’s dungeon synth/non-metal library can be a bit hard to pin down, as what he released under the first three Mortiis albums had two long (veeeeeeery long) pieces each that went through various moods and sounds, but then with his last two albums he finally shortened his tracks quite a bit, ending that period with the very majestic The Stargate (what many considered to be his best album from that era).
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In an interview I have with him, he stated the his Vond side project was more of his “f*** off!” attitude as compared with Mortiis (although Mortiis’s second album of Ånden Som Gjorde Opprør sounded, at times, more like Vond than Mortiis to me). Granted, this doesn’t explain his Green Eyed Demon album, replete with many samples from various movies. Cintecele Diavolui had this buzzy undertone that sounded like it came straight out of The Immortal video game for the Sega Genesis (along with most of the pieces being a soundtrack for Halloween festivities), and the self-titled Fata Morgana album was what I considered to be light dungeon synth, although parts of it had a bit of a mournful sound to them. (There’s other stuff of Mortiis’s like The Unraveling Mind album that I’m leaving out because I’m not real familiar with them, along with his industrial/metal stuff that he’s done as well, but those don’t belong here now, does it? :P )
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However, calling this single “Fata Morgana” (note the sarcastic quotes) was a bit of a stretch. This is electronica, like Kraftwerk with a touch of space synth here and there (the latter of which is what barely merits this release into being included on this codex, if you ask me). Maybe Mortiis thought fans would be confused if he came up with a *fifth* moniker for himself and his music, although it seemed to me he could’ve just called this one “Fatawerk” and forgot about it.
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Anyway, "Space Race" starts off with Mortiis's vocals being run through a vocoder (which is what makes you sound like a robot), then once the music starts it's fast, jazzy electronica/space synth (along with some hand claps). There's a brief cool bridge, but then it goes into a fast, “Chopsticks”-like riff at around the two minute mark (as you wonder what the hell made Mortiis go into this type of music), then that’s followed with this pulsating, *disco*-like sound effect, of all things (whatever that’s called; you can pretty much see the disco ball spinning and throwing lights all over a club floor). The sudden, abrupt ending is funny though.
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Then there’s "Robot City", being a bit more silly, what with the repeating of the phrases "we are robots", “robot city”, what sounds like “mission fail”, and a few others throughout the track. It’s like you had someone create these robots and/or the city, yet someone else, being a bit dim-witted, was in charge of their limited vocabulary, like the dumbass Pakled alien race from the Star Trek: The Next Generation universe.
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Anyway, this gets a bit Kraftwerk-like, although it DOES have a low, brooding bass-line underlining, which is surprising. There are a few brief breaks where it's just this bassline going along with Mortiis's vocoder vocals that’s pretty cool, and there's a really nice, brief passage at 3:15, which I wish this keyboard riff was repeated a few more times, unlike where, during a bit throughout the piece, there's a clanking noise on the drum beat, like this is the sounds of a robot (I suppose), which is annoying.
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This isn’t bad electronica but it doesn’t hold a candle to just about anything else in Mortiis’s dungeon synth era. The only reason I'm able to review this is because I got the self-titled Fata Morgana cd recently and these two tracks were thrown on there as a bonus, as I wouldn't have gotten them otherwise.
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Long may Mortiis live though with whatever the hell he’s doing, music-wise. After all, he has made quite the variety so far, as these (rather off) singles prove.