#monocube

[occultamusica]

Monocube - Sehnsucht (in Various, The Great Architect, 2017)

[fluidsf]

Polar Visions Amplitude / Fluid Sonic Fluctuations - Cross reviewing:

Gamardah Fungus - 10 Years Compilation: Singles, Rarities, Remixes

Self-released on September 9, 2020 by Gamardah Fungus

Reviewed format: review copy of the Gamardah Fungus self-released compilation as lossless WAV files in master-quality resolutions up to 32-bit/44.1kHz. Many thanks to Igor Yalivec for sending this over.

Selected connected listening: More music by Gamardah Fungus in the form of albums and compilation tracks is available on physical format and as downloads from their Bandcamp page (https://gamardahfungus.bandcamp.com)

The Metempsychosis compilation as well as other dark experimental Ukrainian underground music is available from Khatacomb (https://khatacomb.bandcamp.com)

Most Monocube albums are available on physical and digital format from this Bandcamp page (https://monocube.bandcamp.com)

Gamardah Fungus is a name that you might’ve come across earlier on through this blog if you’ve been following this blog for a longer time and indeed I have reviewed a track of theirs earlier as featured on the excellent Kaleidoscope compilation released on Flaming Pines last year. After the release of their excellent new album Natural Storm on Hidden Vibes at the end of that same year, the Ukrainian duo consisting of experimental musician and sound artist Igor Yalivec and guitarist Sergey Yagoda recently returned with a new self-release on CD celebrating the 10 year anniversary of this project. Titled 10 Years Compilation: Singles, Rarities, Remixes, the CD includes a selection of compilation appearances as well as remixes of 3 Gamardah Fungus tracks by associated Breakcore and Drill & Bass infused Drum & Bass project Submatukana (which features Igor Yalivec). Gamardah Fungus combines Drone Doom inspired guitar performances by Sergey with Igor’s rich electronic and electro-acoustic layers forming a kind of Ambient that blends at times lush calm atmospheres with the darkness of Metal, hazy distortion and elements of Noise, field recordings as well as looped drum recordings into their signature style. It’s because of this interesting mixture of Ambient with darker underground music influences that I’ve tagged this review under both Polar Visions Amplitude and Fluid Sonic Fluctuations as the music encompasses various crossing approaches to sound and melody. This variation is also apparent in the quite diverse approach you’ll hear on this compilation, differing from track to track whilst still retaining the melancholic, somewhat hopeless but also calming feelings Gamardah Fungus’ music radiates, with the three remixes being more consistent and similar in approach. The CD obviously enables you to check out Dmitry Khabarov’s excellent cover artwork printed on a nice cardboard sleeve but also in the digital format of my review copy (similar to the download version) it looks great. The tribal like ritual style from the etch like black and white image makes me think of imagery depicting ancient gods and various animals sacrificed to theses gods in auspicious times above the fire. It’s got a lovely non-symmetrical style to it with creatures, flowers, elegant decorations flowing around the square making this a lovely “classic” kind of artwork that does match the more organic elements of the music on the album, especially those featuring nature recordings. Further into my review copy I have the promo PDF and the 10 tracks in the format that they were mastered in, 16-bit/44.1kHz but with track 1 being in 16-bit/48kHz and track 8 in 32-bit/44.1kHz. Several tracks on this compilation are indeed remastered or remixed but the sound quality is consistently great throughout and there’s no jumps in loudness too. Now let’s jump into the 10 tracks featured on this 10 Years Compilation.

10 Years Compilation starts with Zen Garden, a lush atmospheric piece that can bring you into a quite relaxing state of mine as suggested with the title. Featuring calm minimalist clean guitar melodies over a warm flowing mellow drone and subtle field recordings of crickets the piece is the quietest track on the whole compilation but already does have some mystery within its summery warm ambience. Tube-like resonant tones flow through the piece like the eerily braking distant trains and the phaser effected sound of the guitar gives it a bit of a more psychedelic edge than other pieces on this compilation. Clanging metallic sounds like the bells ringing near a railroad crossing add some surreal imagery to the mixture which sounds both calming but also a bit foreboding. A sweet calm start to the compilation. Human Or Not follows which moves us into darker, more dystopian territory, featuring an electronic ambience that’s a bit more stripped back the piece revolves a lot around the heavier distorted melodic guitar phrases that tumble and scatter around the stereo field. The atmosphere we have here is more one of a certain threat, uncertainty about the future, an inner struggle. With the title Human Or Not you can already guess that indeed there’s some kind of question the music seems to ask continuously. Am I Human, is this technologically ever advancing world overtaking the humanity and natural things? The flowing drone background is ominous in its subdued texture through which sharper tones periodically chime like an alarm tone sneakily disguised as a friendly notification sound whilst the guitar expresses the aforementioned struggle through sad repeated tones, gliding and brittle clicking string noises. Like on the previous piece Zen Garden, guitar and electronics interplay in this track in a great manner with both elements embracing each other in waves of tone and sound that rise and fall in an almost improvisatory manner with both guitar and electronics at times rising to the foreground to express their urgency or fragile underlying emotions. On the next track Fetus Crying Gamardah Fungus brings us a more straight-forward piece of music which follows a more traditional compositional structure. The piece is pretty much a slow droning Metal track though the drums of the track are actually looped drum recordings rather than a studio recording of drums with slow sombre clean guitar riffs slowly building towards a distorted hazy distorted climax until building towards the clean ending melodies of the piece that softly fade out afterwards. In terms of sounds the piece is not the most distinct track on this compilation with the electronics taking quite a background position here, though vinyl crackles can be heard alongside the guitar and drums giving it a bit of a different flavour but it’s an enjoyable good and intense track nonetheless and keeps up the dark eerie ambience we’ve gotten into from Am I Human onwards rather well. With Clean Eyes Of My Childhood Gamardah Fungus returns to the drone-based approach of their music in a piece which features some tasty creative improvisational aspects to the guitar performance as well as an eerily calm pulsating quality to the drone driving the piece. Sergey Yagoda plays introspective and contemplating melodic phrases which he breaks up more and more with clicking, at times wooden sounding string noises and harmonics which combined with the reversed delay on the guitar add to the organic narrative quality of the guitar. Igor Yalivec’s electronics follow more of slow crescendo in this piece with the warm resonant pulsating drone often showcasing a rich brightness every time it rises, soft cello-like tones also fading in around half-way into the piece to ever grow in intensity in the second half though never overshadowing Sergey’s guitar. With its intriguing combination of warm electronics and a free-flowing guitar performance which carries rawer distorted sonics the piece makes for a great listening experience blending lush “classical” Ambient elements with Avant-Garde improvisation. Afterwards on Sea Salt (with Monocube) we dive into darker territory, with Monocube’s deeply flowing electronics centred in the stereo image, Gamardah Fungus’ layers within the piece, guitar and sampled drums make for a cinematic sombre listening experience that again feels quite “classic” in its approach with the music feeling quite organic and like a live performance. Feeling quite like the soundtrack to the environment of a deserted landscape or a terrifyingly quiet city Sergey’s guitar performance leads the piece with subtly narrating, clicky melodic phrases, a times running through crunchy edge of high-end distortion. Monocube’s electronics create a metallic river of mysteriously flowing droning tones and wide stereo-panned high pitched screeches, not quite emitting a feeling of dread but things aren’t looking to good for us they seem to be saying. The scattering low pitch-shifted drums and vinyl crackle add abstract percussive elements to the piece that aren’t driving the music but rather seem to be rhythmically transported shards and debris of demolished buildings and rubble, not very harsh but quite murky definitely. The rising and falling pulsating quality to Monocube’s electronics do remind me a bit of the previous track but have a more Industrial quality to them, being less glowing and more inherently metallic. This is definitely a great mixture of Gamardah Fungus’ sombre droning atmosphere’s with Monocube’s refined approach to Dark Ambient, a fine piece of music again. Forester Blues follows, which is a much lighter piece of music in comparison. Featuring more minimalistic electronics in the form of a looped field recording recorded in a forest forming the backing of Sergey’s guitar the piece feels more like a melodic natural soundscape. The melodic phrases on guitar are this time repeated by a looping pedal / device with which an ever growing structure of looped layers of melody, overtones as well as subtly scratchy tones is created, flowing in a calm but also mysterious fashion creating the ambience of sitting somewhere in the middle of the forest around a little campfire at night hearing all the surrounding sounds of shifting leaves and wolf-like noises. These aforementioned sounds can be directly heard in the field recording in which the guitar is placed as if the sound is softly reverberating in the forest. Besides describing the ambience of the forest this piece could also be interpreted as actually being the soundtrack to a walk through the forest at night, with the ever increasing number of looped guitar layers expressing the ever-increasing awareness we suddenly get whilst discovering all corners of the forest, the secret nocturnal animal activities that are suddenly laid bare to us. All in all, it’s an intriguing different sonic approach Gamardah Fungus brings to us here and another great chapter within this increasingly varied sounding compilation. Afterwards we have the last original track on 10 Years Compilation, Kyiv Underground. At 13:56 minutes it’s the longest track on here and also the most guitar-focussed one with the piece essentially consisting of an extended guitar solo by Sergey backed by manipulated hazy and Noise like field recordings by Igor creating the most Metal / Noise like music that you can find on here. Sergey’s solo is focussed around a dark dramatic droning note that he returns to quite often as the base of the swirling melodic phrases that plays. The phrases have quite a lot of passion and energy within them, with Sergey varying the melody from screeching wails to wavering overtone rich laments, afterwards returning to the base tone with ever-increasing thick layers of noisy gritty distortion. The melodies start of quite slow at the beginning of the piece but move towards fiery high-pitched speed acrobatics that still do carry the dread-filled mysterious ambience that’s much enhanced by Igor Yalivec’s murky and strange sonic manipulations. These manipulations include the sounds of the metro underground, including an announcers voice, noises from the subway trains themselves as well as indiscernible bits of voice and vary from ghostly washes to strangely electronic blips as well. It also sounds like Igor’s manipulating the guitar melodies themselves too at times with tones at times sounding like falling into hazily diffuse shadows of darkness adding to the stereo delay effect that already makes for a nice scattered effect of the guitar melodies. Kyiv Underground is the most melody driven piece but also one of the darkest and noisiest on the compilation without the layers blending too much into each other. It showcases Gamardah Fungus’ harsher and more abstracted side rather well and I feel this piece could also be a great entry point for listeners with more Noise / Industrial oriented tastes. Afterwards we got the first of the three Submatukana remixes that close off the compilation which is the Submatukana Remix of Burning Church of Eternal Sorrow. As mentioned in my introduction these remixes fall into the Drum & Bass territory mixed with influences from other related styles and this first remix indeed does feature some nice breaks and buzzing bass tones accompanying the chopped up guitar melody. In the remix Submatukana use this guitar melody in a looped manner as the melodic base around which the synths and bass hover featuring a warm bell-like “classic” Drum & Bass style tinkling melody as well as rhythmic pulsation in the bass synth line. The breaks themselves are quite familiar sounding in nature but Submatukana does chop them up rather nicely and they build up the remix in a quite progressive manner, gradually increasing the number of layers and afterwards dissecting them in a subtle manner. Just like the two remixes to follow the music is more straight-forward in nature than the original pieces but the music is nicely produced and enjoyable as it never gets repetitive. One thing I did notice however is that these remixes, like unfortunately happens more often with Drum & Bass tracks have rather boosted high frequencies in the mastering which make the hi-hats and cymbals become a bit washy and close to masking some of the other instruments but the sound quality is still good in any case. The Submatukana Remix of Advocatus Diaboli which follows uses more of the melody from the original track to build up the remix with a large chunk of the distorted guitar melody mixed with clean arpeggios being used as base of the bass melody of the piece. Sombre and dramatic in nature the melody gives off a great doom-laden ambience which mixed with the full-bodied breaks and scrunchy bass makes for an energetic piece of music but there are also some nice creative touches beyond this like the Ukrainian (?) voice sample and funky electric piano in the first half of the remix adding some quirky vibes to the remix as well as some sweet filter usage on the breaks in the second half of the remix. Definitely a fun and varied listen. After this we have the third Submatukana Remix and final track from the 10 Years Compilation, which is of the track Opium. I’d say that in approach this one is the most minimalist with Sergey’s moody dense guitar melodies being mostly used as a hazy background to a quite stretched out section of squelchy bass wobbles forming the Dubstep inspired sound of the remix. The drums are a bit further back in this remix being more a programmed but also crunchy distorted type of Industrial Techno rhythms. At the end of the remix we do have a rather nice section of glitchy tones and clanging metallic percussion too. Overall the remix makes a pretty interesting Eastern Asian kind of mystery out of the dense guitar melody from the original track with flute like synth enhancing this influence and the bass wobbles are varied enough to keep the energy at a consistent level throughout the remix. A fine closing track to this excellent compilation. With 10 Years Compilation, Gamardah Fungus brings us a great varied selection of original tracks and sweet remixes that showcases both their warm atmospheric and their darker more mysterious side. The creative merging of flowing, pulsating electronic and field recordings of Igor Yalivec and Sergey’s passionate and at times improvisational guitar performances makes for a compilation that takes you on a sonic journey to various emotional states of mind as well as walking through the rich mysteries of nature. I award this compilation a Polar Visions Amplitude of 95 dB. I highly recommend this compilation and there’s plenty of great music in here for both fans of lush Ambient and more experimental darker styles of underground music. Check this out.

You can purchase 10 Years Compilation on CD as well as a download from the Gamardah Fungus Bandcamp page here: https://gamardahfungus.bandcamp.com/album/10-years-compilation-singles-rarities-remixes

[1linemetalreviews]

[NEW RELEASE] [NOT METAL] Monocube - “Substratum” (2019) Top-tier dark ambient in the cosmic/Lovecraftian/drone vein 8/10 (click pic to listen)

[jesus-calderon9]

Escuchando su punto de vista sobre la experiencia, Cerro La Vieja - Piojó, recolección semillas Palma Amarga, proyecto #monocube #cubesinspace

[jesus-calderon9]

Estamos haciendo historia #monocube primer objeto costeño en el espacio #cubesinspace firme #grupoapolo

[jesus-calderon9]

Pronto el proyecto estará en el espacio, Mono 👍💪 #cubesinspace #apolinautas #monocube #tardigrados

[gacougnol]

BLUE DUSK /// RED DAWN by monocube