Product Description
2 Spiraling Into Continuous Self
3 Cyclical Behaviour
4 Expanding and Contracting
5 Returning
6 Weaving of Fields
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"A bold, daring album of electronic guitar-scapes, simultaneously intense and meditative. Morris’ guitar oozes forth like magma from some primordial deep sea vent. Among the best releases of 2025."
-Steve Davis, KKUP Neptune Currents
Limited edition of 1000
Genres: Ambient, Experimental, Metal, Drone
For Fans Of: Fripp & Eno, Manuel Göttsching and Steve Hillage
Blood Incantation guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky extends his tendrils towards the cosmos on his hypnotic Projekt Records debut. The iridescent electric guitar-based pulse shows his affection for shimmering soundscapes, classic Krautrock, and everything progressive. Origination‘s 69 minutes of interlocking textures ring with scorching guitar riffs drifting into sustained ghostly ambient atmospheres.
As a member of progressive death metal quartet Blood Incantation for nigh on 15 years, Kolontyrsky has his fingers in the pie of some of metal’s most confrontational, otherworldly and hyper-dynamic sounds. There’s abundant love in the room for him and his bandmates as they’ve flipped extreme music’s script; 2022’s cinematic ambient album Timewave Zero displayed that creativity comes in many forms and there’s no harm done in twisting a complete 180º from expectation.
Kolontyrsky’s solo debut dives further into non-conventional territory using his extensive guitar palate and chops honed through years of precise playing. He demonstrates that a guitar solo can transcend assumptions to become a song within a song that simultaneously challenges and connects with the listener. Evolution is key to understanding his jump into a genre removed from the pounding drums expected when hearing his name; it’s important to remember that growth, expansion, opposing convention, opening portals of possibility, learning and employing new tricks along the way are all part of the human experience. Limiting or restricting the human experience is well, let’s just say it, boring.
Enter Origination.
Tapping into the worlds of ambient, experimental and drone, Origination expands Kolontyrsky’s talent towards the cosmos, creating soundscapes spectral and ethereal, nostalgic and dreamlike, yet often blistering with obsessive riffs and spacey inspirations.
Kolontyrsky draws on a penchant for deep dives into Krautrock, progressive everything and drone-ambient. These varied influences can be heard in the combination of ghostly floating and furious understated shredding in “Cyclical Behaviour” and “Expanding and Contracting.” Tracks like “Infiniscape,” “Returning” and “Weaving of Fields” are more ethereal, vast and droning while “Spiraling Into Continuous Self” presents like computerized raindrops falling on the head of Cold War stillness.
Kolontyrsky enlists the help of visionary ambient artist Steve Roach to add a deep layer of additional zones, drones, and sonic enhancements. The duo’s previous friendship, and musical engagements with Blood Incantation, led Steve to bring Origination to Sam at Projekt Records; the album offers a new look into the world of genre-blending of metal, rock and ambient music.
Recorded in his home studio over the first months of 2025, the album makes use of a Roland JP-8000, Korg minilogue, Moog MicroMoog, Soma Lyra 8, Soma Cosmos and his trusty B.C. Rich Mockingbird electric guitar.
Origination is more than “classic guitar guy goes experimental route” à la Robert Fripp, Manuel Göttsching and Steve Hillage. Kolontyrsky’s debut is a fleshed-out, shifting sonic embrace of varied interests and swirling realms of composite chaos.
Credits:
Morris Kolontyrsky — Guitars, Synthesizers, Loops, Recording and Mixing
Steve Roach — Additional Zones, Drones and Sonic Enhancement
Robert Rich — Mastering Engineer
Olivia Sanchez — Photography and Cover Art
David Harthcock — Photography Assistant
Sam Rosenthal — Graphic Design
© Solar Planetary Order Records, ASCAP
Reviews Editor –
From Tape Op
Death Metal goes Ambient? Morris Kolontyrsky’s new album: Origination
For those familiar with Morris Kolontyrsky’s searing guitar work in the progressive death metal group Blood Incantation, his debut solo album Origination may cause a double take. But a closer look reveals an ongoing infatuation with ambient music, including his Fish Season project with fellow cosmonaut Paul Reidl [Tape Op #164]. After band practice one night, the duo improvised a memorable session in their SI-169 studiokompound, released as Fish II by Eye Vybe Records. And while Paul’s solo ambient projects have garnered wide recognition, Morris has now also made a bold statement in the field with Origination.
Inspired by former roommate Neal Samples’ work with cult Denver outfit Tollund Men, Morris began releasing his Impressions series on Bandcamp as a proof of concept for his solo flights, and the blueprint was laid for Origination. Setting up in his small bedroom studio at home, Morris dove into his Roland JP-8000 synth and a vintage 1974 Moog Micromoog (“instant cosmic vibe”) to provide the foundation of floating pads and black hole ambience. Flourishes were provided by his first analog synth, the Korg minilogue, and the unpredictable enigma known as the SOMA Lyre-8. The idea was to push the limits of the outboard gear on hand, keeping a separation from the SI-169 space. Once everything was set up, there wasn’t much room to stand, especially with a guitar in hand.
Without room to properly mic an amp, Morris’ BC Rich Mockingbird ran through a Neural DSP Quad Cortex amp modeler pedal, adding tape saturation in Apple Logic Pro X to make it more natural. For an audio interface, he continues to employ an 8-channel PreSonus FireStudio. (now, that’s kvlt!)
Getting into the headspace to plow into infinite space required letting chords resonate and loop indefinitely while Morris sat and contemplated, or wandered around the house, immersing himself in the sonic textures. Nothing was planned ahead, and everything was about just “being in the moment.” Once he’d hit nirvana in that headspace, it was time to lay down guitars, which helped the sprawling soundscapes find their way back to earth. Layering improvised solos was the fun part, with most of the first takes making their way onto the album. “I didn’t have to worry about missing notes, because there aren’t any notes to hit. There’s nothing to aim for.” With most of Origination’s tracks running north of ten minutes, Morris would sit for hours and “wait for the piece to tell me that it was done.”
Once everything was recorded, Morris passed his audio stems along to dear friend and ambient pioneer Steve Roach [Tape Op #161], who had mentored and inspired him to take on the project. Steve ran the stems through his mixing console and outboard gear, adding additional drones. “I’m not even sure what he did, but he Steve Roach-ed it!” After getting the stems back, Morris used further EQ and compression inside the box to help make the frequencies sit together more smoothly. Having previously mixed his solo black metal project Natürgeist, Morris found the mixing of Origination a more intensive affair, as “there’s no blueprint.”
After mastering was completed by Robert Rich, Steve connected Morris with legendary label Projekt Records, led by Sam Rosenthal (Black Tape for a Blue Girl), which was a dream come true as a longtime fan. “To be in the same breath as (labelmates) Michael Stearns and Erik Wøllo is an honor.” Morris will also be making his live debut at Roach’s SoundQuest festival, August 28 to 30th in Tucson, Arizona. While impossible to recreate live, he’ll be setting up the Moog and JP-8000, along with some new toys like the Meris LVX Modular Delay pedal, and playing “in the vein” of Origination.
So, what’s next for our outer limits explorer? He’s been writing in the world music-inspired vein of Popul Vuh and incorporating that into the endless spacious vibe of Origination. Teaming up with Occupied Hex games, Morris has also been tapped to create the soundtrack for their upcoming role playing game, Echo Lifeboat, which could end up being the A-side of the follow-up. “Working towards a goal of scoring the game changed the way I would write. It doesn’t need to be sprawling improv the whole time; I can turn a click on whenever I want and start adding timpani or orchestration.”
Grabbing Spitfire’s free BBC Orchestra plug-in, Morris realized it wasn’t against the rules to write this way, and he was off to the races. “I don’t know what to call it, but it feels like an opus situation, like Mike Oldfield. Releasing music under my own name, I feel like I can do whatever I want. On a personal level, this helpsmeexist, it’s my form of therapy and makes me feel good. I’m grateful for all of the success Blood Incantation has had, but when we’re not on the road I still need to create. There’s so much more to give.” -Sam Retzer
Reviews Editor –
From Exposé
Kolontyrsky is one of two guitarists of the Denver, Colorado based death metal band Blood Incantation, the other being Paul Riedl. I first heard of this band via Steve Roach’s live album Crossing the Bridge – Live in Boulder, a show where Roach and Blood Incantation shared the same stage. That was from 2024, so it was no surprise when Kolontyrsky released his debut solo album Origination at the end of 2025 on Projekt, and although it’s pretty far away from the death metal idiom, elements of his guitar technique developed in that setting are in evidence everywhere throughout the album’s six long tracks. What we have at hand here is a sound that could be classified as industrial ambient, recorded in his home studio using Roland JP-8000, Micromoog, Korg Minilogue, Soma Lyra 8, and of course, electric guitar with a full complement of effects and loops, and Steve Roach is on hand adding additional zones, drones and further sonic enhancements. At times a listener might be reminded of Fripp and Eno’s endeavors of the mid-70s, though far more jagged and brutal, with a touch of German Kosmiche music blended into the mix for good measure, and a powerful blast of ambient industrial drones that give the sound a powerful and edgy experimental drift, often manifesting itself as a dense wall of sound that a listener can become immersed within. There are no vocals, no cadence of any kind, but there are bits of melodic fragments that appear throughout the pieces, fading in and out and hiding just below the surface. All but one of the album’s six cuts exceed the ten minute mark, and the closer “Weaving of Fields” clocks in at over sixteen, giving Kolontyrsky plenty of room to stretch out into a near dreamscape mode. This is the kind of album one will want to experience on the headphones, each spin will surely reveal new sonic elements that were missed on previous spins, and challenge the listeners imagination. Tracks like “Spiraling into Continuous Self” and “Cyclical Behaviour” as well as the opener “Infiniscape” that sets the stage for all that comes after, will certainly earn it a place in the inner sanctum of cosmic music. -Peter Thelen
Reviews Editor –
From KKUP Neptune Currents
A bold, daring album of electronic guitar-scapes, simultaneously intense and meditative. Morris’ guitar oozes forth like magma from some primordial deep sea vent. Among the best releases of 2025. -Steve Davis
Reviews Editor –
From Chain DLK
There’s a particular pleasure in watching a musician step sideways rather than forward. Not escalation, not refinement, but a deliberate change of gravity. With Origination, Morris Kolontyrsky does exactly that: he loosens the bolts of expectation, lets the guitar drift away from the blast radius of death metal, and follows its echo into deep space.
Known primarily as the guitarist of Blood Incantation – a band that made cosmic dread feel muscular and metaphysical at the same time – Kolontyrsky has already shown he’s allergic to creative confinement. “Timewave Zero” was the warning shot. “Origination” is the long-form transmission that follows once the channel is clear. Released on Projekt, a label with a long memory for artists who treat sound as environment rather than event, this debut feels less like a side project and more like a recalibration of identity.
The album unfolds over nearly seventy minutes, but time here behaves oddly. Tracks don’t “progress” so much as breathe, expand, contract, and occasionally stare back at you. Guitar is the gravitational center, but it’s rarely the rock instrument of habit. Instead, Kolontyrsky treats it as a generator of texture and duration: sustained tones that shimmer like heat haze, riffs that emerge obsessively and then dissolve, solos that refuse the usual heroics and instead spiral inward, becoming self-contained ecosystems.
There’s a clear affection for krautrock’s patient momentum and the long arcs of 70s cosmic music, but Origination never slips into museum mode. Pieces like “Cyclical Behaviour” and “Expanding and Contracting” flirt with propulsion – motorik ghosts flicker at the edges – before melting back into drone-rich suspension. Elsewhere, “Infiniscape” and the vast closing stretch of “Weaving of Fields” trade motion for immersion, creating the sensation of floating inside a slowly rotating object whose boundaries you can’t quite map.
The production plays a crucial role in this sense of controlled drift. Recorded in Kolontyrsky’s home studio, the palette of analog and semi-analog gear lends the album a tactile warmth, but nothing here feels nostalgic for its own sake. Synths, loops, and guitar interlock like overlapping weather systems, each influencing the other without demanding attention. Steve Roach’s additional layers don’t announce themselves; they deepen the floor, extend the horizon, and quietly remind you that ambient music, when done right, is less about calm than about scale.
What makes Origination compelling is not the novelty of a metal musician going ambient – by now, that trope has worn thin – but the absence of apology. Kolontyrsky doesn’t dilute intensity; he redistributes it. The tension once delivered through speed and distortion now lives in duration, repetition, and the slow accumulation of detail. It’s music that trusts patience, both its own and the listener’s, and never rushes to justify itself.
If there’s humor here, it’s subtle: the quiet irony of a guitarist known for confrontation choosing instead to linger, to let notes decay, to build a record where nothing explodes and everything glows. Origination isn’t a manifesto, and it doesn’t pretend to be a spiritual awakening either. It’s simply the sound of an artist allowing curiosity to lead, unconcerned with borders, genres, or the comfort of staying put. And honestly, that kind of freedom still feels slightly radical. -Vito Camarretta
Reviews Editor –
From Luminous Dash
Absolute Elsewhere, the third album from progressive death metal band Blood Incantation, was undoubtedly our favorite album of 2024. The American band already grabbed us by the throat in 2022 with Timewave Zero, an unexpectedly strong ambient album steeped in Berlin influences. One of Blood Incantation’s two guitarists, Morris Kolontyrsky, now ventures into the world with their deeply cosmically tinged debut album, Origination.
The near-infinite cosmic space holds an irresistible pull for many—a source of inspiration that leads to unstoppable creativity. With Origination, Kolontyrsky explores the ambient world in a remarkably experimental way, letting his guitar parts float and flow through drones and expansive soundscapes. The result is a series of aural paintings in which ethereal and dreamy atmospheres slowly unfold. Kolontyrsky constructs his compositions progressively, his guitar lines and solos slowly merging with the electronic clouds he conjures with his Roland JP-8000, Korg Minilogue, Moog MicroMoog, Soma Lyra-8, and Soma Cosmos (a truly delightful setup for hardware enthusiasts).
In a modest yet confident manner, Kolontyrsky allows influences from krautrock, ambient drone, and, of course, metal to seep into the nearly seventy-minute album. He creates nostalgic, eerie, and ethereal atmospheres, with frequent dark ambient pulses. The strings are alternately plucked and shredded, but always with a controlled sense of proportion. For the finishing touch, Kolontyrsky was assisted by visionary ambient maestro Steve Roach, who added depth and texture to the drones and soundscapes. Roach also opened for the release night of Blood Incantations Absolute Elsewhere in the United States.
Origination is a superb album that fans of Robert Fripp (King Crimson), Steve Hillage (System 7), Brian Eno, and Manuel Göttsching (Ash Ra Tempel) will thoroughly savor. Kolontyrsky knows exactly what he’s doing and proves with his solo debut that extremes like death metal and ambient have more in common than many suspect. The 2022 solo debut from the curly-haired guitarist of the biggest metal band on the planet doesn’t even come close to Kolontyrsky’s minor masterpiece. That had to be said. -Patsker Omaer Beguin
Reviews Editor –
From Ver Sacrum
Known as the lead guitarist for Blood Incantation and Spectral Voice, Morris Kolontyrsky has released his first album under his own name on the prestigious Projekt label, a work in which he explores the most experimental corners of his artistic nature. It’s no coincidence that he, like many of his colleagues, emerged from the death metal gymnasium, where he cemented his technique and discipline, which he now puts to good use by developing in these seven lengthy tracks (the finale “Weaving of Fields” easily exceeds sixteen minutes) insights and concepts that make Origination akin to Frippi’s conception of experimentation, understood as the investigation and implementation of a lofty idea of composition. An album that will sorely test those who approach it superficially, but not those who appreciate the dilation of the instrumental texture pushed almost to the breaking point, without actually doing so (“Expanding and Contracting”).
In Origination, Kolontyrsky strips away his extreme sonic trappings (though he draws insights from them), descending into the cavities where sound itself originates, transforming raw noise into essential symphonies, alone with his machines, embracing the doctrine that the aforementioned Fripp, alone or in collaboration with Eno, Steve Hillage, and the disciples of krautrock, have perfected over the years, without codifying it but rather always allowing intuition and free initiative to prevail. Restless carpets of drone music and cosmic ribbons of guitars illuminate, like dark neon flashes, metallic scenarios shrouded in the darkness of an Arctic winter that seems unwilling to yield to the advent of the sun (“Spiraling into continuous self”). But even in this seemingly gloomy context, distant flashes of light can be glimpsed. -Hadrianus
Reviews Editor –
From The Wire
The logical step for Denver based cosmic death metallers Blood Incantation following their foray into kosmische with 2022’s Timewave Zero was for individual band members to start making waves with outboard solo work (see guitarist/vocalist Paul Riedl’s Hoverkraft and Hanging Moss projects). Guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky’s debut solo work Origination sees him tapping into a combined love of subdued shredding and ambient soundscaping.
Kolontyrsky’s gift is his ability to conjure up canvas-worthy imagery via fleet-fingered fretboard work and accompanying celestial washes. The gritty Shrapnel Records flash and fade to black pulsing of “Expanding And Contracting” and “Spiraling Into Continuous Self” catapult the mind’s eye to the closing credits of a morose 1980s action drama, while the tubular bells and volume swells of “Returning” suggest sitting on the deck of a hillside home looking over the industrial skyline and choking haze of late stage capitalism. “Infiniscape” soothes with contemporary classical ominousness and the ten minute “Cyclical Behavior” generates an atmosphere like a meditative sea salt float towards the light at the end of a particularly warm and fuzzy tunnel.
With the master of silence himself, Steve Roach, contributing drones, Origination‘s collision of understated six-string heft and synth-driven ethereality straddles both contemplation and unnerving dystopia in an ultimately rewarding listen. -Kevin Stewart-Panko
Reviews Editor –
From Metal Sucks
Blood Incantation Guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky Unveils His First Solo Album Origination
You may know him for his work as a guitarist for the insanely popular progressive death metal outfit Blood Incantation, but guitarist Morris Kolontyrsky is looking to branch out and give you something else to remember him by with the upcoming release of his debut solo album Origination.
Due for release on October 10 via Projekt Records, Origination is a 69 (nice) minute-long soundscape where Kolontyrsky manages to shed his death metal persona and do something new. With an almost laser focus on the cosmic side of things, Kolontyrsky’s debut solo effort will be firmly in the realm of ambient, experimental and drone.
Kolontyrsky draws on a penchant for deep dives into Krautrock, progressive everything and drone-ambient. These varied influences can be heard in the combination of ghostly floating and furious understated shredding in “Cyclical Behaviour” and “Expanding and Contracting.” Tracks like “Infiniscape,” “Returning” and “Weaving of Fields” are more ethereal, vast and droning while “Spiraling Into Continuous Self” presents like computerized raindrops falling on the head of Cold War stillness.
Kolontyrsky draws on his enjoyment of guitarists like Robert Fripp, Manuel Göttsching, and Steve Hillage to help color the soundscapes he sought to craft with Origination. And while he says it will transcend our expectations given his pedigree as a death metal guitarist, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise, given his talents as a musician. -Hesher Keenan