Luna Kafé e-zine  Luna Kafé record review
coverpic flag Ukraine - Full Moon 157 - 07/07/09

v4w.enko
Harmonic Ratio
Kvitnu

Yet another deliciously designed (the cover art, designed by Zavoloka) CD by the Kvitnu label. It's always exciting to get a packet from the Ukraine in the mail box. This time it's a multimedia project by Eugene Vashchenko, and it's actually been some months since this CD by v4w.enko showed up.

Harmonic Ratio is a strict collection of 'music'; programmed tracks, showing minimalist mathematic-techno, or playing with algorithms and frequencies. To quote the release notes: "Constant correlation flow of outer factors and pre-programmed algorithms taking influence on real time process procedures. It's inner life consists of simple particles closely interrelating each other by finding basic principles harmonic variations." Oh, yes... Math was never giving me the best grades in school.

"Science of structure, order, and relation that has evolved from counting, measuring, and describing the shapes of objects." (Encyclopaedia Britannica) I think this is the most extreme Kvitnu release I've checked out. Even though it's a harsh platter (more than 1 hour long), some of the sounds/noises and sound/noise patterns make sense and form rhythms being suggestive. But, here aren't 'songs', or 'melodies'. Only extreme processing and programming, with titles like "Awava_b", "Future__19L19-19L44", "Future__20L13-20L23", "Io_n_l", and "409620483", plus some more normal ones: "Many Birds", "Opus28", "Dot Static", "Biorepeat", or "Interval Induction".

Not for the faint hearted. This is art-core. By man-machine.

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