#one of them sent me a detailed email afterwards about what the glitch was and how she managed to fix it

[liesonthefloordramatically]

today in surreal moments: apologized to two of the librarians because I once again requested so many books that I found a glitch in their system and they yelled, "NO, DON'T APOLOGIZE, YOU'RE OUR BEST USER," at me, in unison

[marvelousbirthdays]

Happy Birthday, wintershadowkat!

July 16 - A TaserBones with the"Soulmate identifying mark" trope for @wintershadowkat

Written by @backwardsandinhighheels

Darcy was in her freshman year at Culver when word spread around the campus that the feds were taking apart the science department.

Like every other bored student, Darcy joined the crowd of people pretending to walk past while jostling for a better look at the men in black carrying computers, files, and various bits of machinery to waiting vans. Through judicious use of elbows, she squeezed her way close to the entrance at the front, craning her neck to see into the building. 

Her interest must have been too obvious because a guy in a black bulletproof vest focused in on her as he ushered students away. “Nothing to see here, miss. Move along, now.”

At those words, Darcy stared up at the guy in shock for a good ten seconds, before finding her voice. “Are you serious? That is such a lie. That’s like the biggest, most blatant lie I’ve ever heard and like, I knew it was probably going to be a lie but I didn’t think it was going to be that bad.”

It was at the end of her rambling that Darcy realised three things:

1. They were in public, surrounded by hordes of students with nothing better to do than gawk at whatever entertainment came along,

2. Whatever qualms she had about having a lie curving around her waist, her soulmate had her rant about lying somewhere on him and that kinda made up for it, and

3. Her soulmate was tall, dark, and seriously hot

Also, he was looking at her with an unreadable expression that somehow made the rest of the world quieten away.

“You’re too young,” he said finally, and she felt her stomach drop.

“What do you mean? Are you rejecting me?” She’d heard the stories, but never imagined it could happen to her.

Thankfully, he shook his head. “I’m not saying no, I’m saying not yet. You need to grow into yourself first.”

“That’s… fair.” Well, it wasn’t ideal, but she was sure that once she’d gotten over the shock, she’d be grateful he hadn’t proposed on the spot. Her cousin swore up and down that had happened to an old classmate of his. “You want my number?”

His eyes sharpened. “You got an email? It’s probably more reliable.”

Darcy nodded and went to write it down. Halfway through the first email she’d made when she was twelve - and her mom was right, she really needed to get a more ‘professional’ one - she scribbled it out and wrote in her college email instead. There was no way she was introducing herself to her soulmate with hula_h00p_gurl@hotmail.com (listen, underscores used to be cool, all right?) which reminded her - “I’m Darcy,” she said. “In case you were wondering.”

“Brock,” he replied.

“Like from - “

He sighed. “Yes, like from Pokemon.”

She pressed her email into his hand. “Nice to meet you, Brock.”

~~~

Their communication was sporadic, interrupted as it was by exams (Darcy) and super-secret overseas assignments (Brock), but over the next little while, Darcy discovered her soulmate was kind of a dork.

Sure, he’d mastered martial arts she’d never even heard of, refused to listen to music past the year 2000, and admitted he’d never actually played Pokemon. But when she sent a Nintendo DS to the post box he’d finally admitted to having, he kept her up to date on his progress through Pokemon Pearl and argued with her on her choice of starters.

Best of all, however, he asked about her. He quizzed her at length on her childhood, on her family and friends, and in return, she heard about the life of an army brat who never really saw himself doing anything else. She told him all about her degree, bouncing essay ideas off him when he was in the country long enough to reply in time. He was especially interested in her own ideas on the sliding scale from freedom to security, positing hypotheticals that ranged from the silly to the downright chilling.

As time passed, she began to hint about meeting up, but he would deflect, telling her it wasn’t the right time. Eventually, she gave up. The first email after she stopped hinting had a distinct note of relief, so Darcy resigned herself to a platonic bond. 

Brock was not impressed when she landed an internship in the middle of New Mexico, but then, his emails had a rather overprotective streak, so Darcy wasn’t fussed. She decided against giving too many details after the whole ‘Loki and the Destroyer’ thing, but he somehow found out anyway.

Boy, that was a fun set of emails.

After that, their first real fight, conversation sort of… tailed off. Brock didn’t stop emailing, exactly, but he was more distant, less interested. By the time Jane landed a job at Stark Industries, Darcy in tow, she’d whittled him down to a penpal in her mind. A friend. Someone she’d met once, a long time ago. When a server glitch at Culver disconnected Darcy's email address, she barely noticed. It didn’t hurt at all. Really.

~~~

"Who is Crossbones?" Darcy asked, running her finger down the list of guests for Tony's event for superhuman, enhanced, or otherwise heroic individuals. 

"Hmm?" Pepper glanced over from where she was doing final detail checks on the schedule. "Someone Steve knows from Washington. Ex-SHIELD, possibly ex-Hydra. I think Steve said something about him being a double agent, but until we know his reasons for turning, Tony is hesitant to have him on the team."

"Fair enough," Darcy agreed. "I won't seat him with the rest of the ex-SHIELD crew then. Oh, have you taken a look at your speech? I emailed the revised version to you this morning."

"No, I haven't. Thanks for reminding me." Pepper made a note on her tablet. "Will Jane be coming, do you know?" 

Darcy shook her head. "When I checked this morning, she said she was done with superheroes and promised not to blow a hole in the time-space continuum if I brought her canapes afterwards." She looked down at her list again. "I still think we should have nametags. What am I supposed to call this guy? Mr Bones?"

“You could just ask him,” Pepper suggested.

“Doubt it.”

~~~

Darcy was making the rounds, clipboard in hand and desperately wishing for nametags, when Steve caught her eye. Once he had her attention, he beckoned her over to where he stood with another man. 

“Rumlow, this is Darcy, our coordinator and facilitator. Darcy, this is -”

Darcy’s jaw dropped. Also her clipboard, but she barely noticed. “Brock?”

The man next to Steve caught the clipboard, his own stunned gaze meeting hers. “Darcy?”

“How - what - what are you doing here?”

“Could ask you the same question.”

“Do you two know each other?” Steve asked, looking between them, bemused.

Darcy plucked the clipboard from Brock’s hand and passed it to Steve, her eyes never leaving Brock’s face. “Be a dear and sign people in, would you?” Taking Brock’s hand, she dragged him through one of the staff entrances and into a storeroom she’d inspected earlier.

“You’re Crossbones?” she demanded, as soon as they were alone. “You’re the ex-Hydra guy?”

“How did you know about that?” Instead of letting her answer, he cupped her cheek with his hand. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

She pushed his hand off her face. “You can’t just - it’s been six years!”

He dropped his gaze and his hand. “I know. I’m sorry, I didn’t think. Are you - is there someone else?”

“No,” she responded immediately, and his drooping shoulders straightened. “But I thought you didn’t want me!”

“Darcy, you were too young.”

She paused. “I’m not in college any more.”

“No, you’re certainly not.”

“Oh good,” Darcy said, before dragging his mouth down to hers.

It was a few minutes before they broke apart, Darcy’s fancy updo in curls around her face and both of them breathing heavily. 

Brock shook his head. “I had a whole speech, you know. For if I ever saw you again. I was going to explain everything that went down at SHIELD.”

Darcy waved a hand in dismissal. “I already know most of that. I need to know if you’re going to stick around.”

“Do you want me to?”

“Of course!”

He didn’t even have to think about it. “Then I will.”

“Oh good.” She began to pin her hair back up. “We should probably go out and rejoin the party. Oh! Did you know there’s another Pokemon game out?”

Brock snorted. ‘You’re going to ruin my image with Rogers.”

“Is that a yes, though?”

“Yes.”

Giggling, she slipped her arm into his and snuggled against his side. “Let’s go.”

[fluidsf]

Fluid Label Focus on QUANTUM NATIVES 4 Crown Shyness: Isonautics (2019) Review format: review copy of MP3 download as kindly provided by QUANTUM NATIVES Welcome to a review of the second recent release on the label QUANTUM NATIVES and once again we’ve got another awesome package of music with this album in MP3 download format. As always, QUANTUM NATIVES kindly sent me a review copy of the release via email, including all info and a link to a video for the first track on this album, Glacial Romance. The album we have here is titled Isonautics and is by the artist Crown Shyness. Crown Shyness is one of the aliases used by American artist Kevin Carey. The album description as provided in the email I got is again really interesting and this time in the form of what seems like an abstract narrative written as a fragment of a logbook by a captain of a large ship. The log tells that the ship had capsized during their journey but most importunately it talks about songs as being physical objects, chunks of frequencies. This description of music is derived from the sound of the sea as the title of this logbook fragment suggests and this theme of a journey on a ship combined with waves of abstracted music and musical elements flowing through the sound of the music is what I felt is the driving force of the Isonautics album. Before I move onto my review of the music and the video attached to the album for the track Glacial Romance, I’ll mention that download contains the 13 album tracks in 320kbps/48kHz above CD quality audio, the album cover in good 1100x1100p resolution as several icon files for the album cover and icon of this release on the map of the QUANTUM NATIVES site. Isonautics is an awesome album that is clearly composed like a continuous journey rather than a collection of several pieces as the 13 tracks all quite smoothly connect to eachother. Throughout the album the music switches from glitched and awesomely sound designed and composed melodic tracks with Deconstructed Club elements in them to soundscape like compositions built out of various sounds and occasional musical elements as well. Isonautics starts with Glacial Romance for which cceggyang and Aldéric Trével also made a video. The video features animation from both artists showing an articial landscape that features dark mountains and backgrounds that are changing overtime like architecture and nature blending and morphing together. Abstract rounded figures also feature in the video, like sculpted organisms embodying the sonic elements in a visual form and a fragmented structure made up of blue “Roman” style columns with rectangular roofs on them can also be seen. It’s a great combination of music and 3D animation in which the animation seems to express the musical elements in vision through the evolution and movement in the space but also adds a separate more independent layer of abstraction to the combination through the more alien yet also familiar looking organic rounded shapes. The images that came into my mind while listening to this first track without the music video were more into the territory of the aformention journey with this large ship. The music samples, especially the strings sound a lot like the overture of one of Wagner’s Der Ring Des Nibelungen operas and gives the music a quite meditative “infinity” type of ambience. Like the journey on the ship is long and slow but we are passing some gorgeous icy landscape, like traveling through Antarctica by ship. The clicking sounds, chain dangling and bell sounds draw you into the soundscape of the ship and are some wonderful touches to the piece and introduce the album in a great way. Next track Stormborn describes a storm at sea through a soundscape of water sounds, noise effects, low bass rumbles and a jumpy drum rhythm that’s very well composed as well as sound designed blending the mechanical sounds (representing the ship) with the hissy and liquid sounds that represent the storm itself forming an exciting mixture of kinetic rhythms and richly detailed soundscape elements, sounds very convincing like a storm too. Then on Breakwater we have chopped elements of a drone in the same key as Glacial Romance in the first half, but with a glassier filtered tone that’s mixed in between an abstract groove of stuttered time stretched and reverberated drum sounds and sound effects that hints at mechanical sounds of the ship. A great mechanical rhytmscape once again with some lush glassy synth tones at the end. Labor has got this “nocturnal view on a quiet ship” kind of vibe to it, with mechanical clicks, metallic clangs and rock like sounds forming a soundscape that sounds like machinery and clicking chains on the ship without the sound of sea in the background. It’s like the captain is very focused on his ship, listens to the mechanics, checking if there’s no odd sounds of broken machinery audible with his focused thoughts drowning out the sounds of the sea in the quiet night. Spiral expresses a memory fragment of a calm peaceful night on the ship in the night through a looped sound collage of manipulated music samples and mechanical sounds, making for a great mixture of fuzzy musical ambience and metallic machinery sounds. Granite (strain / tension) embraces metallic and digital sonics with a very glitchy chopped up mixture of mangled Footwork like grooves and Bass Music like resonant synth sounds that do also reference the ship again with their hollow decay. A very captivating composition of sound sculptures mixed with almost continuous grooves with a very inspired feeling for both execution and the form that these sounds are in shaped into. Silent Quarries sounds like a melancholic feeling getting expressed through resonances of the ships structure. Resonant vibrating metal surfaces shaping shifting tones and drones that conjure up a mysterious sense that the ship is alive, as a being of its own. The filtered tones in the first half of the piece also add an organic vocal quality to the textures created on the piece that creates this awesome feeling of both organic and metallic materials creating melodies of their own, deep into the night. On the short piece Tread Well, a catchy guitar melody is tinkling from what sounds like a frame of metal springs vibrating which moves into a low pitched mechanical sound, which leads directly into Cut From. Cut Form is a continuation of Tread Well in which you can hear all kinds of mysterious ghostly low shifting sounds as well as less processed sounding bits of a guitar melody which are combined with chops of acoustic drum sounds, clock sounds and various flying sound effects. The piece sounds a bit like you’re hearing the soundtrack of a moment in time when the captain of the ship is struggling to steer the ship in the right course and time goes by (the clock sounds) as he’s thinking and communicating with the outside world what to do in this uncertain situation when he’s unsure where he is anymore and where he is heading in this ice-cold dark nocturnal seascape. Leak is a great abstract Glitch piece that has some of the classic elements of the style, like several sections containing series of short phased impulse ticks but there are also much more metallic sounds and stuttered percussion loops in here too as well as pitch manipulated vocal samples. Overall the piece is a great glitchscape combined with some more rhythmic samples of chopped crystalline sound and synth outbursts. Then on Thrash we have a short piece consisting of resonant stuttered manipulated vocal music samples, like impulses of strange shiny metallic matter. Home of Depths moves quite deep into the nocturnal sea journey ambience and also features a more continuous rhythm and progression than the pieces before, moving into a more gradual type of evolution of the music. With a more subdued ambience the music gorgeously explores the icy seascape outside with distant drones, crystalized resonant tones, combined with some really catchy jumpy mechanical percussion rhythms. There’s also some more extreme dynamics in the piece with some percussion elements (like a laser like sound) spiking out at some points and the differences in distance between the percussion and drones and resonances in the background bring a great depth to the music, making this perfect music for nocturnal introspective deep listening. Final track Roguelike (perpetual light) starts off with a quite loud melodic richly textured ambience but afterwards moves into a mysterious deep ambience of hollow tones, reverberating mechanical sounds and a minimalist slow melodic pattern on glassy crystal synth. Various quirky synth effects also twirl around in the quiet nocturnal ambience. Quite eerie but also calming, this subdued but also richly detailed piece forms a great quiet ending to Isonautics that works as a great point of rest after the sometimes intense abstraction from the music before. Isonautics by Crown Shyness is an awesome album of imaginative deep and well composed and sound designed soundscapes and abstract experimental music. The album’s concept and especially the references to both the captain’s log about the concept of music as being objects of accumulated frequencies and the abstracted back story about the ship help to guide you into this album’s nocturnal journey through an icy seascape full of details, memories, mixed clusters of sound and musical elements blending into new sonic shapes. The album’s tight tracklist also helps as the 13 tracks playing after each other really smoothly flow from one into another bringing you to a variety of sonic pictures and keeping the album coherent as a whole. Combined with cceggyang and Aldéric Trével’s excellent music video for the track Glacial Romance I highly recommend you to check out this album. This is an especially great listen if you’re a fan of contemporary abstract electronic music that experiments with Club elements, if you like Glitch infused soundscapes or if you’re looking for a nicely varied experience of quality underground Electronic music that freely moves from abstract experiments to more recognisable melodic and rhythmic pieces. Highly recommended. Go check this out. The MP3 download released on QUANTUM NATIVES is available here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/srrbwu4irzs1ymi/Crown+Shyness+-+Isonautics+%28QNR024%29.zip?fbclid=IwAR0-43HBPS3ZFssTkTpqD7Hqz8to9g7sD1nHnJaLQWhHPYrkOvQ7Gx_ani0 Watch the video for Glacial Romance by cceggyang and Aldéric Trével here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=pgurUcMHEPA

[fluidsf]

Fluid Label Focus on Flaming Pines 1

Various Artists: Kaleidoscope (2019)

Reviewed format: Advance review copy of Digital Compilation as kindly provided by Flaming Pines

Welcome to the first review in my new series about Kate Carr’s Flaming Pines label in which today I’m reviewing the most recent release on the label, the compilation Kaleidoscope. Kaleidoscope is a compilation of underground music from Ukraine, compiled by Igor Yalivec from the group Gamardah Fungus (whose albums have also been released on Flaming Pines) and is released on CD and as a Digital Download. As Igor Yalivec writes in the introductory essay in the info text file in the press kit (which was kindly sent to me by Kate Carr through email) the compilation idea was inspired by growing attention by the media for Ukrainian avant-garde music after the Flaming Pines releases of Garmadah Fungus’ albums. As he writes, the compilation is meant as an introduction and promotion of Ukrainian underground music and for reasons of format limitation, brought back to 12 track totalling around 76 minutes playing time (for the CD and download versions). Indeed the compilation aims to offer a varied look into Ukraine’s underground music scene through these 12 pieces by 12 artists, as the music varies from Dark Ambient soundscapes, to synth minimalism to more Braindance like music, as Yalivec calls it, a Kaleidoscope of music. The Kaleidoscope compilation features cover artwork by young Ukrainian artist Alina Gaieva who created a funky cartoon like drawing that represents this compilation in quite a quirky fun way by a combination of cubist stylized people, various devices and tree branches that also look like cables. In the image she blends all these elements together to depict the way the artists featured on the compilation are “inter-connected” to each other, this is indeed quite appropriate as I found out after doing some research that many of these artists have either played gigs together or have featured on similar labels or releases together as well as there being a bit of a cross of members from the groups featured on the compilation with some artists featuring in multiple groups on Kaleidoscope, like Igor Yalivec himself. The image also has a nice element of abstraction to it with the various trippy shapes scattered around the image adding some wild energy to the image which is also apparent on the music on this compilation and the hand-written like typeface of the Kaleidoscope title adds a sweet DIY aesthetic to the image. So, some great artwork to the compilation indeed. Before I move onto my review of the music on this compilation I’ll point out the contents of this download version. The audio files in my version are all WAV files, with varying audio resolutions however, most likely the direct masters so they’re all good quality. For convenience however (if you’re gonna get the lossless download), I’ll note which tracks have which audio resolution. 16-bit/44.1kHz - 4-6, 11-12, 24-bit/44.1kHz - 1-3, 10, 24-bit/48kHz - 7, 24-bit/96kHz - 8, 32-bit/48kHz - 9. Furthermore there’s the back cover in good resolution, an info text file, and the front cover (both cover files are in 3543x3543p).

Kaleidoscope starts with the piece Voice Way by composer Alla Zagaykevych. It’s a gorgeous piece of music that features (what sounds like) various manipulated sung female vocals filtered into glassy resonant droning waves of sound. The ghostly and distant filtered sound of the piece makes it feel like you’re walking through a mysterious tunnel, light shimmering randomly in a cloud around you, distant muted singing reaching your ears, but the sound is never quite distinguishable. There’s a great constant evolution between sonic ambience and more recognisable vocal textures that keeps switching and changing into a new form. The music consists mostly of this cloudy resonant haze of filtered glassy sound, though sharper resonances also shine through but stays relatively subdued, at least until the end of the piece. In the final 1:16 minute of the piece suddenly a metallic intense synthetic frequency modulated sound comes in which is way louder than the haze we heard before building towards an intense short climax that ends in a calm tail of vocals fading out. A great dynamic rich piece to start with. On the next piece Partita For Two STOs by Heinali, Heinali has created a partita for a modular synth system featuring two Make Noise STO modules. Looking up partita, I found out this type of music is normally for solo instrument but since this can also mean one type of instrument the name definitely matches. After the progressive but still quite gradual piece by Zagaykevych, Heinali’s track contrasts quite a bit with a more minimalist sound. But I definitely like this adventurous sequencing in the tracklist and with an aleatoric performance approach in this piece but with the modular synth still retaining a calm subdued tone it’s a sweet second track. Partita For Two STOs features quite a twirling sound, especially in the melodic tones that fall mostly in the mid-high registered, these are often accompanied by long tones forming a kind of base to the piece. However, this base still always shifts and indeed at first this piece might be quite challenging to get into with the seemingly random melodies. But if you keep the base tones as reference and closely follow the melodic patterns the piece becomes clearer, the calm atmospheric organ like texture of the STOs also helps to give the piece a pleasant calming ambience which can help some listeners. Besides the aleatoric atmospheric element there’s also something organic about this piece in that the movements of tones at times seem to resemble birds or other elements, although going to the opposite directions the movements could also represent short strings of data, but whichever way you interpret it, it’s definitely a sweet piece you can listen to multiple times and gradually untangle all of its layers. Afterwards we have Monocube with his gorgeous piece Hortus Amoris, a deep and dark Ambient piece with a melancholic and sad ambience, almost like losing hope but even though the melody itself sound quite sad and desperate, the textures themselves are quite bright in fact. The vocal like sounds hidden in the depths of the cloudy atmosphere sounds sad but also still quite energetic, it’s like feeling fear for something but the fear isn’t fully overtaking you and there is still hope coming in the distance. Gradually evolving, the pieces textures shift through various metallic resonances, glistening high pitched droning filtered whirring and at times quite ominous glissandi. I love the depth, strings like textures of some of the droning ambiences within the piece and ominous elements in the resonances and there’s a great evolution in both subtle melodic shifts and changing textures, a very good piece, one of my favourites on Kaleidoscope. On next track Memories, the group Gamardah Fungus creates a meditative Ambient soundscape featuring calm improvised guitar melodies backed by a mellow filtered drone and richly textured field recordings. It’s very nice piece to relax with, but there’s also a lot of good depth in the piece with the drone forming a mid frequency resonant ambience that keeps on flowing really nicely and the field recordings add a lot of pleasant but also excitingly dynamic sonic details to the piece, like the “laughing” like high pitched sounds, the soft sounds of cars driving by and the mixture of nature recordings adding peaceful clanging rhythmic organic elements to the soundscape. The melodic guitar improvisations are also quite minimalist, never going very fast or intense in terms of tempo and dynamics but the melodies are playing well into the ambience and have a good balance with all the sonic elements surrounding the guitar, a very nice piece again. Then on Isolation we have a piece by Endless Melancholy that also moves into the droning Ambient direction. This track however, is a much more gradual developing piece with a pretty intense noisy diffuse continuous drone that is very harmonically resonant again. The noisy drone fluctuates and evolves quite a lot in the piece, moving from glimmering harmonic sections to more harsh waves of distorted fuzzy ambience, sometimes crunchy, sometimes hissy. The slow calming guitar lead melody adds an introspective element to the curious mixture of atmospheric and distorted elements in the music that gives the music a Shoegaze like kind of “ambient rawness”. Like meditating in a room full of loud machinery with your own mind creating a peaceful glow of tranquility within you, as expressed by the warm resonant drone and guitar melody in the piece, very nice. On Ujif_notfound’s piece Noi_Cht1056 we find quite a different sonic environment. As I could already guess a bit from the artist name, it’s quite a glitchy digital piece of music. Consisting of various wild stereo panned Noise manipulations over ghostly feedback like resonances and filtered drones, the piece is very abstract and like most of Ujif_notfound’s work is most likely generated through a custom algorithm. It’s a sweet cross between AM radio like sound manipulation and mysterious Industrial tinged droning in which the noise is definitely forced quite a lot to the foreground through some intense compression. There’s a lot of enjoyable scattered, ticking and vibrating stereo glitches and variation in noise texture and the resonance do have some kind of melody within them even though they do sound quite abstract. This is definitely a great piece especially for its many variation in sonic manipulation and the fuzzy intense compression of the piece makes it quite intense listening with all the rapid impulse rhythms within especially, nice sounds. Additionally, the resonances do have quite an oriental sound to them too, which is quite intriguing combined with the digital noise and glitches, like hearing sounds from a ritual in a temple through all the noisy manipulations. On the next piece Flux, Andrey Kiritchenko then brings us into some smooth atmospheric Braindance vibes with a nicely subtle but also quite funky piece of music. The music is based around drones and is a blend of various layers of mellow synth drones, a calm but quite distorted guitar melody, some nice glitched vocal samples that are panned around and a bouncy mid tempo beat at the end of the piece. The music doesn’t really undergo dramatic developments, but instead flows quite gradually from section to section, with variations in the drone, guitar melody, voice glitches, forming most of the evolution within this piece, but it definitely works to give the music a good ambience but also a structure in which the music moves towards a new phase, which is the groove at the end of the piece. This groove feature some sweet synth drums, funky squelchy bass and various quirky synth effects, there’s definitely a sweet relaxed vibe in the piece, very nice. Then we have Kayak with the piece Astra, a minimalist piece of electronic music with a pretty classic Glitch / Braindance sound to it. The piece builds from a quiet calm subtle first half featuring filtered “liquid” synths and bit-crushed resonances to the more dynamic second half which features irregular drum rhythms and squelchy short glitches and synth tones. The piece has got a feeling to it like waking up on a Sunday morning in a house near the river, quiet sounds all around you, water and water drops being very noticeable to hear and a general feeling of introspective rest. The melodic elements are very calming and serene and most of the progression in this piece is audible through the rising and falling loudness of various elements within, like the bit-crushed droning tones and the irregular bouncy drums that seem to get busier especially towards the end of the piece. All in all a sweet subtly flowing piece in which the separate layers of sound, glitches, tones, drums also layer over each other rather well with several of these layers move forwards and backwards in the sonic space to great effect. Afterwards we have Craving, a piece by Motorpig which is relatively short. On this droning ambient piece, the resonant filtered and quite rhythmic organ like drone forms the base of a warm glowing Spring ambience. The drone is accompanied by field recordings of a strange bird sound, soft noise and wooden crackling sounds. A soft chiming melody leads the piece as the drone subtly fluctuates in overtones and filtering for a pleasant organic waving kind of sound, a very nice meditative piece again and the mixture of the tones and field recordings / noise create a great “nature” themed atmosphere that is very immersive on listening to the piece. Then we have r.roo’s track Far Far Away From You in which we have quite a different kind of sound. Leaning towards a kind of Tango like instrumental Synthpop sound the piece is more melodic and Electronic based than the music before but still has quite an atmospheric tone to it. I especially like the dynamically changing filter frequency of the lead melody synth which adds a nice swing to the melody, this melody is accompanied by an instrumentation consisting of quite clean sounding reverberated synth drums, a deep detuned wobbly bass synth, as well as some sweetly clicking string like synth patterns as well as a sweet additional high pitched PWM synth melodic synth pattern that comes in the second half of the track. Definitely a great piece which combines catchy melodies with some sweet synth and drum work that sounds very vibrant and also a bit dark and mysterious. Afterwards on Thunderstorm, Submatukana bring us a sweet Downtempo piece that sounds like an aural picture of a drive through a thunder storm, with the windscreen wipers, rain, care engine noise all contributing to the rhythm and sonic details of the piece. The piece features a simple distorted lead melody until the final section of the piece in which a second different melody on subtly saturated piano comes in. Thunderstorm’s got a great attention to detail in how the sounds are used and the field recordings combined with the melodies and punchy mid tempo beat form a great ride of a track, the underlying droning tone also adds a sweet bass tone to the music. A very nice piece, I like how the music subtly evolves in this one based on the car related sounds, thunder and rain. Final track Salt by Kadaitcha is one of the most varied pieces on Kaleidoscope in terms of instrumental performances. Featuring a combination of electric guitar improvisation and quirky electronics, it’s a sweet drone based piece of improvised electro-acoustic music. The guitar plays various melodic patterns and chords, at times quite diffuse sounding and the sound of the guitar itself is also effected at times by reverse effects, while the electronics vary from ring modulated synth effects to mallet like repeating resonant patterns, glassy glistening harmonics to the crunchy rhythmic noise in the second half of the piece. All in all it’s got a great peaceful ambience within it with the guitar and synth improvisation adding plenty of curious and intriguing sonic paths that move through the drone ambience, a very nice closing improvisation of this excellent compilation.

Kaleidoscope is a really nice compilation of underground music from Ukraine which has got quite an atmospheric, often drone based theme to it but in which the music can also vary from this Ambient to more experimental abstract pieces, Dark Ambient, Braindance and improvised music. I particularly like how this compilation not only gives a good introduction to the music of these 12 artists but the variation of sounds and styles also brings the listener to various places, situations and compositions that are all quite personally attached to the artists themselves. The selection of music is very consistent and Kaleidoscope is therefore also a great listen on its own as a flowing compilation album. I definitely recommend this compilation to listeners who are interested in getting introduced to Ukrainian underground music, fans of Ambient mixing field recordings and experimentation in it and if you’re a fan of Braindance, Glitch and more rhythmic styles of electronic music you’ll also find some great music on here. I would say, go check this out.

Pro-printed CD and Digital version of this compilation are available from the Flaming Pines Bandcamp page here: https://flamingpines.bandcamp.com/album/kaleidoscope