Ugasanie & Dronny Darko – Arctic Gates


Arctic Gates is a collaboration of two prolific artists from the Cryo Chamber label: fellow Ukrainians Ugasanie (Pavel Malyshkin, aka Polterngeist) and Dronny Darko (Oleg Puzan). Its overall feel is oddly subdued, in a manner indicative of Puzan’s idiosyncratic ‘lowercase dark ambient’ that emphasises its intimate relationship with the subject matter through subtle sound-collages and a heavy use of field music. What is perhaps most striking about its use in Arctic Gates, though, is the extent to which the distinction of synthesised sound and field recording is blurred. Continue reading →


Ugasanie – Ice Breath of Antarctica


I’ve never really gone in for the whole Weather Dependant Music thing. You know, listening to Pop Punk in Summer, Immortal in Winter, Megadeth when the clouds spell out the word “dickhead” in the sky? It always felt a little superficial to me, turning music into a glorified decoration, when REAL music fans listen to whatever they want whenever they want it. Continue reading →


ProtoU – The Edge Of Architecture


How important is the theme of a piece of music? To what extent do aesthetic choices (artwork, lyrics, stated concepts) colour the audience’s perception of the sounds? It’s a question that doesn’t frequently get asked in Metal, where the same basic themes are repeated by the majority of bands until they become taken for granted, but Metal-adjacent genres like Dark Ambient can make it seem much more significant. Continue reading →