By: Ilker Yucel
Editor

Soothing atmospheres of electronic goodness, providing a pleasant escape from the world’s turmoil.

As proven by information on their web site, the duo of Grundik Kasyansky and Slava Smelovsky have amassed an impressive resume of film and theatre music. Thus, it should come as no surprise that their album …For Electronics and Birds showcases a cinematic quality of lush symphonic ambience and ever-changing motifs and progressions. Most of the tracks clock in at well under five minutes, with two even passing the 10-minute mark, giving the impression that the music must be dramatically intricate and complex. While there are moments of intricacy, they are primarily relegated to the production work, which this reviewer is almost sad to admit is becoming the only saving grace for a variety of bands and artists today. The short length of the majority of these tracks makes for a series of spring-like vignettes, with any vocals done by a collection of sampled bird calls, tweets, and chirps; all except for “Lost Fado,” which features Victoria Hanna as an ambient voice to complement the airy washes of electronic treatments. The song is somewhat reminiscent of Kanno Yoko’s soundtracks for the anime, Macross Plus. There is a fairly minimalist outlook going on with most of these songs, featuring little more than light beats for the sake of rhythm, twinkling arpeggios that seem almost bell-like (particularly appropriate to the aptly titled “Music Box”), and plenty of pad sounds to put the listener into a psychedelic trance. It would be unfair to say this is not a pleasant collection of music. On the contrary, some of these tracks feature some clever electronic manipulations of sound and the atmospheres created give slight impressions of melody. Songs that are of interest are “Music For Mr. Ambient,” with its IDM-like waves of arpeggios and static blips, and “Pianka Do Golenia,” which sounds somewhere between Latin Jazz and French vaudeville; a very quirky track indeed. …For Electronics and Birds is not a bad album by any stretch, nor does it lack in interesting moments of ear candy. Yet, at the same time, there is a wonder as to just what audience would this album be best suited for. It is a very pleasant album, almost too much so; not to the point of being unbearably happy, but rather to the sense that there’s not much substance to the emotional appeal to the music, if there is any. Then again, with all the angst and turmoil going on in the world today, perhaps it’s for the best that there are artists like Grundik+Slava to bring a little audio joy.

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