Tineidae - Lights

After coming across few tracks from Ukrainian based resident Tineidae on different compilations during this year, I immediately understood that it is only the matter of time, when I see this guy signing a big label concentrated on IDM music. And this time was not far away behind the hills, the first album of Pavlo Storonskiy sees the ray of light between the glorious constellations of Tympanik Audio, a famous US based electronic music provider. The wave of intelligent electronics is very strong in post-soviet areas in the last few years, and for sure this act is one of the most talented and promising between them.

Without any doubt, with his 'Lights' album Pavlo presents a solid piece of art to capture me from the very first tunes. All the tracks are kept in mid tempo electronic beats, which are the main rhythm section in the whole album, planting a gentle tempo to this creation, like a slight touch of loving hands.

"Torchlights" is an opening track with a futuristic atmosphere and spacy electronic clicks and ticks to carry the airy melody all over the place. Shifting into more harmonic "Azure"; and it injects a strong boost of melancholy into the whole soundscape, but not that heavy melancholy which is misjudged with depression, but the lovely feeling of light memories of things long gone.

As I approach the third track "Rigel", it moves towards floating melody to dive in and reminds me a little bit of flying between star systems or watching a planetarium movie, as it is charged with some kind of sci-fi energy.

The manipulation with sound and emotions brings "Kasatka" (killer whale) into the stage, the track which tries to reveal the diving with this beautiful creature reflected through the eyes of electronic music, full of special effects of splashing water, slight static disturbances and imitation of whale sound.

And here comes one of my favorites, a good old friend of mine; "Absence" is the track that I already heard before on different compilations and I am very happy that this special composition is presented on the album as well. It is a totally massive futuristic soundscape of distant planets, extraterrestrial visions and colorful pictures of worlds still to be explored.

Even though the album is slow and gentle, there are some tracks that present also a little bit heavier parts of break bit idm electronics, like the six "Moonlight" which starts in a slow manner, guided again by the floating melody, but finishes with dense layers of electronic beats and scratches.

Relaxation and calmness are the key words for the whole album, while "Aquila" and "Sky of Glass" invite me to lay back and just sink into the emotional lake of memories and dreams, to remind the moments of joy uniting with a slow flow of those melancholic compositions. Changing mood with "Observatory", a futuristic track that dilutes calmness with a charge of sci-fi soundscapes, I approach closer to the end of the album. Next two tracks, "Paper Birds" and "Hollow Lullaby", come as a logical upshot for the whole journey, where the first is a strong electronic ballad which can melt the coldest of the hearts with its sadness, and the second one is a kind of a bleak outro, which I generally didn't like much because of its relatively short running time and indistinct content that doesn't fit too much into the strong structure of the whole album.

After listening to this record for five or six times in a row, I am convinced that Tympanik Audio gained a great addition to its family. The depth of emotions grants a great experience that is forcing me to spin this cd again and again. As the weaker points of an album I can sign out impermanent inaudibility and overextending in few parts of the album, but they don't affect much the overall image. Anyway, I will definitely follow the steps of this project in the future in hope for new delights. I am sure that despite the strong debut, 'Lights' is not the highest level of Pavel's creativity and there is a lot of potential still to reveal. Sep 05 2012