Etudes

In writing about Igor Yalivec's music it's important to get the big thing out in the open right away. Igor Yalivec is a Dnipro, Ukraine based artist who at the time of this writing is currently living there, recording music, taking field recordings and generally existing as his country is under a pall of unease punctuated with moments of terror. It is under these circumstances where Etudes seems as vital a document as anything coming out of war-torn Ukraine, but also an argument for the utility and importance of ambient music existing as a genre and processing tool. Perhaps it's something like an objectively beautiful ambient record coming from a place of constant tension and unease to remind us of the positive aspects of the utilitarian process of creating and consuming ambient music. The reminder that the outputs are often miles away from the input. Sine waves put through the complex circuitry of modular synthesis can come out the other side as an oceanic wave of drone or blood-slowing pointillist melody. Etudes has those in spades. Created as a tool to "find peace", the 8 tracks that make up Igor Yalivec's second album achieve just that. The ascending chords on "Melancholia" travel through an alchemical process, a climb through the nightside tree of life until they come out the other side a radial band of shimmering light. The rotational chord changes and dulcet melodies on "Awakening" sound particularly inviting, creating an etheric body of tonal clusters that hum, flash and awaken - blooming before dying in a psychodramatic recreation of life, death and resurrection.