Jónsi of Sigur Rós and Swedish composer Carl Michael von Hausswolff have announced a one-off ambient collaboration under the name Dark Morph. According to the press release, the project of the same name was inspired by a trip on a research vessel called the Dardanella, which cruised around the islands of Fiji. Today, they’re releasing the first single called “Beka Yalo.”

On the vessel, the pair used a hydrophone to create field recordings of humpback whales in Tonga, bats in Fiji, and shrimps (which allegedly make noises?). The title of the project comes from the “dark morph” heron of the islands. These recordings were then sampled and manipulated. The result is a dark and super eerie track. It sounds like what I imagine you’d hear if you reached the seventh circle of hell. Pulsating helicopter-like tones are intermixed with whirring yet siren like animal vocalizations. It’s cool and weird.

Here’s von Hausswolff with more on how they captured these sounds:

While we were on the boat I started to take the recordings, manipulate them and mutate them into drones or other types of musical functions—so we could use the sounds as instruments for building compositions. We decided, ‘Let’s try not to have them sounding too much like real sounds, let’s turn them into something else.’  When I had done some drones, some long tones out of a bird or something, I gave it to Jónsi and he started to peel off certain types of melodious things, and then play it to me. And then we started to just throw the ball back and forth.

Check out “Beka Yalo” below.

TRACK LIST:
01 SO(NG)QE
02 URA DARDANELLA
03 BEKA TOVUTO
04 TOVUTO
05 KAVURA
06 WAI
07 BANI MANUMANU
08 BEKA YALO

Dark Morph is out 5/10 via Krunk & Vinyl Factory. Pre-order it here.