MASS / M​Ä​SSA

A 7-CD set issued on Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ that asks the musical question—What makes your nightmare so special? You are likely not working as hard as Rozmann. These are electroacoustic pieces that involve some live instrumentation and choral singing, and the root idea has something to do with the Kyrie and Gloria sections of the Catholic mass. I do not doubt the sincerity of Rozmann’s commitment to that idea—I simply can’t hear it. What is available is a tour of fear city, rumbling over cobblestones and puddles running into a high church echo and falling into a nest of metallic swiping sounds and harsh crosscuts, even burps. This is that high European modernism, the belief that intense and challenging art could hit the spiritual center; meaning, nightmares as soul revelations, not campy catharsis.