condition (disc/cover): EX+ / NM

Stromatolites belongs to the later phase of Morphogenesis's catalogue, the period when the group had settled into its signature five-person configuration (Adam Bohman, Clive Graham, Roger Sutherland, Ron Briefel, and Michael Prime) and refined its method across a sequence of records for small specialist imprints. The title refers to the ancient layered microbial mats that constitute some of the earliest evidence of life on Earth, a geological metaphor entirely appropriate to Morphogenesis's interest in slow-accreted sedimented sound.

Released on Vintage Electronics Records (a small UK imprint dedicated, as the name suggests, to electroacoustic work with a particular attention to the materiality of old electronic equipment), the CD extends the method of Prochronisms: slow-moving beds of shortwave static, biofeedback pulses from Michael Prime's plant electrode experiments, Adam Bohman's amplified metal objects and strings, and processed tape. The compositional pacing is closer to Eliane Radigue's long-form electronic meditations than to the more stochastic free-improvisation tradition the group came out of.

Both Stromatolites and its companion Prochronisms are important because Morphogenesis was unusual in sustaining a stable improvising collective (five players, patient consensus-based composition) over many decades without the group ever quite becoming a "band" in the conventional sense. They were a research project, their records scientific reports, and the CD-packaging aesthetic of these later releases (austere typography, minimal information) reflects that sensibility exactly. Recommended for anyone following the long British electroacoustic thread from AMM to the present.