Ugasanie - Freedom And Loneliness

Cryo Chamber: 2020

Ah, the life of the hermit. Unshackled by societal necessities, uninhibited by that which is expected of you. The master of your realm, answering to no one, only subservient to the whims of nature herself. Such self-determinate isolation has its drawbacks though, most prominent of which the crippling depression that can settle in detached from any and all communal comforts. Some claim the land is your company, connecting to the essence of mother earth itself, but what happens when even that's a barren waste? Rock lichen makes poor conversationalists, much less whatever stray migratory bird happens your way. Life's proven astoundingly resilient to most climates upon this planet's surface (and below!) but there's still regions few dare to traverse for good reason.

This is of course taking things to an extreme, but then Pavel Malyshkin has never shied away from exploring the most inhospitable clime's of terra firma. Throw in the existential dread that comes with trying to survive in such environments has its own intriguing considerations where dark ambient is concerned. I think that's what piqued my interest enough to spring for another Ugasanie outing, the title. There's some romanticism in living off grid, absolutely, but what cost does it come with? How addled does the brain become when so detached from society? Do you turn into some affable goof like Radagast The Brown (as seen in the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies), or perhaps something far worse, far more sinister and self-destructive?

I wish I could say Freedom And Loneliness gets deep into such concepts, but no, it's a fairly straight-forward drone excursion Ugasanie takes us on. It's still captivating in that frigid way most of his releases tend to sound, but this is quite well-tread territory I've traversed from him by this point. Kind of the reason I started drifting more towards his Silent Universe alias, not to mention a couple collaborations with other dark ambient artists.

Things start off promising, in a journeyman sort of way. The first few tracks paint a picture of arriving at your new residence due to circumstances outside your control (damn, that's some frigid waters sounding in Cold Coast). Since you're now here in this Dead Wasteland, however, you might as well make the best of it, maybe even conduct a little Ritual to get better acquainted with your surroundings.

Following that though, the album goes about as deep into the foreboding drone as Ugasanie ever gets. Which hey, does keep the album's theme consistent: the relatively 'upbeat' first half of freedom contrasted with the bitter loneliness that follows. It unfortunately leaves the second half rather repetitive and uneventful, save a sombre piano piece for closer Sorrow. And I don't want to undersell how effective Pavel is at creating an appropriate mood and tone given the subject matter, I've just heard him do it plenty times before. If Freedom And Loneliness happens to be your first Ugasanie session though, then this is a good primer into his body of work.

Dronny Darko & Ugasanie - Dark Source Of The North

Cryo Chamber: 2022

While I've kept tabs on Pavel Malyshkin's various going-ons, I can't say the same for Dronny Darko. Indeed, after my initial honeymoon with all things dark ambient waned (a dark honeymoon!), I let his catalogue slip from my interests. Part of that was the fact he basically fell back on collaborative works, sometimes with other Cryo Chamber regulars like ProtoU (of course) and Alphaxone, other times with new-comers to the Cryo family (Ajna, Radioactive Immersion, G M Slater). Felt a bit of a challenge keeping tabs if I wasn't already familiar with whoever he was working with, especially for an artist I came to realize I could only really take in smaller portions.

Yeah, that's the other reason: Oleh's brand of drone was a bit on the... crushing side of things. I gotta' be prepared to be put into a particular mood after coming away from one of his outings, one I'm not always so keen on being in. Ultimately, dark ambient's all about putting you into something of a negative space - sometimes I just want to feel the equivalent of being inside an isolation chamber, of which Ugasanie is extremely good at (a cold, frigid, remote isolation chamber, if you will). Dronny tends to paint specific pictures within such negative spaces, which can be fascinating to experience within your psyche, but rather disconcerting if you're not in the right frame of mind for it.

So you can see how the two would find sonic simpatico in their scenarios: one creates the space, the other provides the details. In this case, discovering something unreal in the frozen wastes of our Arctic. At least, I assume it's our Arctic. Maybe it's another planet's Arctic? They already did one album covering similar ground, Arctic Gates, but I assume this is simply another exploration of said territory. Still, would be neat if they ended up crafting some long-form narrative out of all their works. Maybe get a Cryo Chamber fanfic writer on it!

Actually, Dark Source Of The North reminds me mostly of an earlier Ugasanie album I've covered, Eye Of Tunguska. Not so clear-cut a storyline as that cinematic drone piece crafted, but more in how things play out. The early Search Of An Object, some sort of Anomaly in an inhospitable domain, coming within its terrifying awesome yet graceful Presence. Establishing some sort of Contact in doing so (ooh, here's were Dronny's effects really come into play), realizing in doing so has horrifying Consequences. You then Transition into... what, exactly? Another being? Into another realm of existence? A sort of permafrost state of mind? It's not clear – cinematic dark drone loves its ambiguity – but whatever it is, it can be found On The Other Side Of The Arctic Gates.

Ooh, seems crystalline, at first. Then... kinda' Altered Dimensions, come to think of it. Well, Dronny's next Cryo album was with Alphaxone, Beyond The Event Horizon. I'd like to believe there's some connective creative tissue there.

Silent Universe - Stellar Winds

Ignis Fatum: 2015

Pavel finally released a new Silent Universe album! Naturally, I'm currently reviewing his first Silent Universe album, released back in 2015. Because if there's anything you can count on with this blog, it's never being timely in covering new releases. Unless you apply some Theory Of Relativity science behind it, I guess.

Like, from a certain vantage point, Stellar Winds is actually brand-spankin' new, and is the only Silent Universe in existence! What vantage point, you ask? Erm, from the Sirius star system's vantage point, I guess. It's only 8.6 light years away, which is just a little further than the distance Stellar Winds would have travelled had it been broadcast in that direction upon its release date. That's either incredibly awesome or mind-meltingly daunting, depending on your stance. Given that we are dealing with a dark ambient album here, I'm gonna' go with the 'reduces one's sense of being to cosmic mush' option.

But yes, having spent the first half of the '10s exploring all manner of frigid wastelands as Ugasanie, Mr. Malyshkin started branching out with side-projects that didn't quite fit that mould. Polterngeist got in on some occult themes, while Silent Universe set its sights among the stars. Or the nothingness between the stars. Or the Lovecraftian horrors that dwell within dead stars. There's potentially a lot of things to explore out there, is what I'm saying, even if it appears to be a whole lotta' nothing getting there.

I think that's what struck me about Stellar Winds, more a sense of journey in this album compared to his latter offerings. That may be a case of dabbling in various aspects of cosmic drone rather than creating a singular mood, but it cannot be denied Pavel's provided a little journey of sorts. Peering Into The Sky is about as neutral a piece of dark ambient drone can be in this context, letting the overhanging black wash upon you, seeing just how deep into the cosmos we really can peer, whether we should or not.

Oh, this doesn't seem so bad. Nebulas And Clusters offers a little harmonic tone for you, letting the grandeur of these massive, parsec-spanning forms gently flow among an unfathomable void. Speaking of, this piece kinda' reminds me of the opening track from The Infinity Coordinates, if a little more minimalist in execution.

That's about the end of 'tranquility' offered by Stellar Winds. Silent Of Stars is a lengthy drone with the pitch slowly lowerering, as though descending into the abyss. And what do we find on the other side? Pure desolation with Zodiacal Light and Terminator, while In The Meteor Shower has us... wait, is this mechanical breathing I hear? Have I been in a stasis pod all this time? Goodness, I never would have thought I'd have feelings of claustrophobia in an album designed to feel open isolation. There's even a trailing bit of melancholic tone towards the end, implying this grand journey has always been within the mind. Seems about right.

Silent Universe - Gravity

Ignis Fatum: 2015

Another promising space-themed side-project that seems to have stalled. Why do I keep stumbling into these? Okay, my sample-size is small, but I'm sure if I kept digging deeper and deeper into all these niche scenes featuring artists with multiple aliases, I'd come across more. I just don't want to keep getting my hopes up, is all. The gap between Distant System releases was excruciating enough, and I needn't put myself through more of that on the regular. Oh, but they tempts us, they do...

I should be thankful The Infinity Coordinates isn't the lone Silent Universe album out there. Yeah, it's been half a decade since Pavel Malyshkin debuted the project on Cryo Chamber, but he's had plenty 'nuff on his plate with continual explorations of all things cold and remote as Ugasanie. Like, imagine if you were a hardcore fan of his other side-project, Polterngeist. That one didn't even get the Cryo bump, mostly relegated to self-releases, and remaining in mothballs for as long as Silent Universe has. Polterngeist did have one item out on Ignis Fatum, the minuscule Belarus net-label that housed the first two Silent Universe albums, so there's that at least.

Was this project started to support Ignis Fatum? Like, I can see Pavel wanting to help the label, though many dark ambient producers from eastern Europe did contribute to their debut compilation Inception (Dronny Darko, Aseptic Void, Symbiosis, to name just a few I'm familiar with via Cryo Chamber). There was even a couple Ugasanie tracks on Ignis Fatum collections, but for whatever reason, Pavel felt this was an opportunity to explore other sounds away from his most successful alias. Fair enough. When your most prominent work gets tied to a certain style, it's harder to creatively branch out. Here's a fresh name for a fresh label, and see what may come of those stellar winds.

Gravity was the second of the two Silent Universe releases on Ignis Fatum (so sayeth Discoggian release dates), and kinda' feels like the more standard of them. Yep, it's another dark space ambient LP themed around singularities, black holes, and all the cataclysmic events that occur at the bleeding edge of observable physics. Plus a pair of tracks titled Dark Energy and Dark Matter, in case you're feeling saucy about exotic astrophysics. Musically, such as it is, we're in Lustmordian drone territory, all ominous atonal moods and sounds. Subtle hints of melodic harmony occasionally emerges in some of the seven tracks (Dark Energy, Event Horizon, Among The Dead Stars), while others seek to simply crush your sense of self (Black Hole, Hubble Radius).

As mentioned, it's all familiar territory where Stygian cosmic drone is concerned. Even knowing how adept Pavel is at this style, I was quite surprised at how encompassing Gravity sounded on my headphones while dozing. Had to take them off at one point to make sure I wasn't hearing it from my regular speakers, as I'm sure drones that loud would wake the neighbours.

Ugasanie - Ice Breath Of Antarctica

Cryo Chamber: 2018

I won't deny having some favouritism towards icy-cool looking cover art, but it's generally spread out among my other albums so it doesn't become a running theme. This is the third album out of the last four to go wintry though, enough that I'm sure some folks are wondering if something more than biased interest is going on. Heck, it could have been the fourth, but I held off on grabbing Ensiferum's From Afar – have enough Viking metal for now, thanks.

It wouldn't be so bad if we were going through a typical summer, with the heat and the drought and the forest fires and all. Some parts of North America are getting that as usual, yeah, but not in my neck of the rain forests. It's been comically dark and grey these past couple months, some of the wettest on record, with humidity you can practically swim in. Not that I want a return to the years of beige lawns and a constant layer of acrid haze in the air, but nor this far extreme the other way. Just enough that listening to a whole pile of CDs with frozen landscapes as the cover art is a soothing escape, not a reminder of miserable weather.

Actually, even in those ideal conditions, I'd hardly call Ice Breath Of Antarctica a 'soothing escape'. In traditional Ugasanie manner, we're taken to a realm of utter desolation, where no sane human being should wish to tread. In theory at least, but the south polar region has its share of tourists eagre to see penguins and southern elephant seals and... um, other fauna local to the ice caps while they last. Only during the summer months though. And preferably when there's ideal weather. While in the company of others, so as not to get lost roaming about. Pretty much the exact opposite of the conditions Ugasanie presents to us in this album, is what I'm getting at.

While Pavel has been Cryo Chamber's go-to guy for all things frozen over, his albums still typically have specific themes in mind. Explorations of abandoned Siberian science stations, the mental state of being overcome by the northern lights, and so on. No such 'journey' happens in Ice Breath Of Antarctica, unless you count being consumed in the absolute worst conditions you could possibly endure while venturing there. Second track Shores Of Antarctica is basically five minutes of bellowing winds whipping your face with freezing sleet before settling into the sort of empty, minimalist drone that's long been this label's breaded butter. You are alone in desolation, absolutely alone. Not even a stray penguin in sight.

The whole album basically plays out like that, unrelenting in consuming you within the polar continent's harsh climate. Some tracks feature sounds of being emersed within slow-moving ice, others offer a brief respite with quiet, reflective harmonies carried along the wind. Almost as if Ugasanie is asking, “well, what did you expect of the lands even The Thing couldn't survive in?”

Silent Universe - The Infinity Coordinates

Cryo Chamber: 2017

Apparently the frigid wastes of our planet's polar regions weren't cold enough for Ugasanie. Nay, nothing but the absolute-zero temperatures of deep space will do now, or at least for the purposes of a side-project. Surely he needn't go that far so soon? Ol' mother Earth may be warming up to such a degree that we will no longer have cold poles, but there's still plenty of frozen clime's within our own solar system. Europa and Enceladus might make for some nifty cold conceptual drone music, what with the possibility of other organisms with hearing capabilities residing on suspected sub-surface oceans. Or go straight for the outer regions of our neighbourhood, music for 'chillin' on Pluto or Eris (ho-ho-ho). Heck, how about the regions between galaxies - now that's some impossible nothingness to reside in. Unless you're 'dark matter', I guess.

Mr. Malyshkin first launched this Silent Universe side-project back in 2015, debuting with a couple digital albums with the short-lived Belarus print Ignis Fatum - I assume 'short-lived', as they haven't released anything new in a couple years now. Always eager to fill out the Cryo Chamber coffers with fresh material, Simon Heath gave Pavel a new home for the project, The Infinity Coordinates the result. And hoo, boy was I hyped to hear this one! Dark cosmic ambient is already one of my vices, Mr. Heath's own Sabled Sun the initial lure into his label, while Pavel's various works as Ugasanie has done wonders in transplanting my mindspace into realms my puny human body has no business being. To hear these two concepts merged, having myself set adrift on desolate ...well, not bliss, but for those who don't have access to a deprivation chamber, lost in the infinite black with nothing but cosmic radiation your companion will suffice.

So I obviously personally hyped this album up based on the cover art alone, though really, what should I have been expecting of this? Space drone is among some of the droniest drone that will ever drone, and while some super narrative or journey would have tickled my fancy, I wasn't about to delude myself into thinking I'd get that in The Infinite Coordinates. At five tracks long – the shortest seven and a half minutes, the longest sixteen – there isn't much, erm, space, to tell much of a story anyway.

And whoa, what's this in the opener Spiral Space? Melodic tones? Mood befitting the cosmiche grande? Yeah, there's still that distinct, impossibly distant desolation Pavel's quite adept at, but he also captures a sense of wonderment too, that you can't help but be swept in the grandeur of endless emptiness. And while the album does descend into absolute isolation drone by the end (who knew faint radio tweets of Pulsar could be so comforting?), one can't help but feel some melancholy about it all too. Dang it, I wasn't expecting getting the feels in this excursion to the outer reaches of all and nothing.

Ugasanie - White Silence

Cryo Chamber: 2013

We've had too much sunshine on the West Coast this summer. Even the nearby Sunshine Coast is looking up at fat ol' Sol and asking, “Dude, let up a little?” And no, blotting out the sun with a thick haze of forest-fire smoke doesn't count. If anything, it makes it worse, scattering the sunlight such that it heats the surrounding air even more, creating intense humidity even us city slickers find suffocating. Why can't it be like the clogged atmosphere of a deep, cold winter, sun rays reflecting back out to space from whence it came? If I can't experience a winter in the summer, I can at least vicariously live one through another album from Mr. Malyshkin, and all his bitter, frozen ambient textures.

This is the first of (currently) four albums Ugasanie released on Cryo Chamber. Yep, took me this long to finally get to where it all began with this partnership, but an important one nonetheless. For most of its initial years, Simon Heath's print promoted the standard dark ambient styles most associate with the genre: post-apocalyptic mood music, industrial bleakness, psychosis soundtracks, with a dash of the ethereal occult for flavour. White Silence added an additional layer to their grayland tapestry, that of remote isolationism within bleak, frigid settings. It's an aesthetic that others had explored in years past, but it was Cryo Chamber's first foray into such frontier, establishing a fearless streak that no dark ambient domain was off limits, no matter how fringe.

Of course, you're wondering if Yet Another Ugasanie Album is worth your time, especially if the previous ones I've covered are entirely too niche in topic for those only just dipping your ankles in dark ambient's onyx waters. Studies in northern madness, aurora borealis meditation, and weirdness in Tunguska are find and dandy, but sometimes folks just wanna' wander the tundra wastes on a sight-seeing tour. Spoiler: there's a whole lotta' nothing out there, maybe a stray bird call or wolf howl piercing the emptiness.

Still, as White Silence was an introductory of sorts for Ugasanie with the Cryo Chamber posse, it's only fitting that the music within is rather broad in scope too. Track titles like Permafrost, In The Northern Lights, Under The Cover Of The Polar Night, and Tundra Fogs usually help set the tone of most other albums from Mr. Malyshkin, but here they're simply another piece of the polar picture he's painting for us. Even the opening track, The Island Of Terrible Death, doesn't lead us to a specific event, merely taking us to the titular shore for a look-see before moving on. Ooh, creepy and ominous.

Another thing that separates White Silence from other Ugasanie albums is his use of melodic timbre. Yeah, it's still that minor-key dark ambient synth pad, but it's more than the typical atonal drone he does in most of his works. That just might make this album his most accessible, if anything in this scene can be deemed as such.

Ugasanie - Border Of Worlds

Cryo Chamber: 2016

Winter is done. It’s over. Finished. Us pampered folks on the West Coast of Canada no longer must deal with the snow and the sleet and the ice and shmulsh and the canceled buses and trains. Nothing but spring weather from here on out. Wet, yes. Cold at times, definitely. The air suffocating with seeds, spores, and pollen? Sure, but it beats dealing with delayed flights due to white-out conditions. This is why I live at sea level, after all, and not in the mountain regions of my land, where winter doesn’t end until June. Or the Northern regions of my province, though I’m pretty certain their winter ends a little earlier.

Point being, for yours truly, winter is no more, so it’s about time I take in another album of bitter cold dark ambient from Ugasanie. Hey, what can I say? The Arctic reaches continuously fascinate me, the inhospitable, impassable alpine tundra captivating me. Lands where only the heartiest of species have a hope of surviving. I mean, just look at that mountain range on the cover art. Just look at it! What hope have thee, of traversing such imposing, insurmountable icons of icy escarpments? No seed may take root, no hoof may climb, no wing may navigate, but for certain peril and doom assured. To lay eyes on such natural wonders of our world – awesome in size and terrible in domain – to even have hope of hiking across their frigid, treacherous paths… is such a thing I’ll never achieve. Remember, pampered Vancouverite. That doesn’t stop me from getting my Consciousness Displacement on though, imagining such vistas as I take in the blasting-cold sounds of this particular style of dark ambient.

In Border Of Worlds’ case though, such sounds are window dressing to Ugasanie’s main focus, taking a trip into a shaman’s trip. It’s a concept Mr. Угасание has explored before, the deep dive into primal forces of the human mind and spirit, as endured by those in some of the most remote, isolated places of our globe. Call Of The North dealt with a sort of ‘Arctic madness’ such regions may cause on those susceptible to auroa borealis’ dancing charms. This undertaking is a proper trek into the inner psyche though, taken by shamans of tribes that dwell in the northeastern portions of Russia. Oh, and mushrooms are involved too.

Even for droning dark ambient, Border Of Worlds is thick with the drone. Most tones and field recordings sound impossibly distant, whether from the isolation of northern winter huts, or feelings of being withdrawn within as the shamanic trip takes hold. There’s sounds of tribal drumming (Obfuscation), howling winds/wolves (White Death), haggard breathing (Initiation), and staggered hiking (In Cold Arctic Winds), almost all of which are buried by the unrelenting drone. Some tracks do offer glimmers of tense, melancholic tonal harmony, almost as a tease out of whatever intense mediation is taking place here. For the most part though, Uganasie offers little respite in this journey.

Uganasie - Call Of The North

Cryo Chamber: 2014

And thus we return to the frigid sounds of Ugasanie, or Угасание in his native Belarus. This CD came out the year before Eye Of Tunguska, and for a brief time held the distinction as one of Cryo Chamber’s first sell-outs. At least, I’m assuming that was the case – I haven’t always kept tabs on the label’s Bandcamp. When I first took a proper perusal of their catalog though, this and Signals IV-V-VI were the only items with the dreaded red “Sold Out” tag attached. And that was a shame for yours truly, anxious to take a deeper plunge into Ugasanie's dark ambient world that included music of spiritual kinship with Biosphere’s work. I mean, just look at that cover art! So cold and inhospitable, yet captivating and mysterious, a realm untouched by the hand of Man, daring the spirit into challenging one’s mettle against the harshest of this planet’s clime’s. Still, I wouldn’t want to trek across the alpine glaciers reaching deep into my British Columbian backyard in the dead of winter – I just like imagining doing so.

In any event, Cryo Chamber restocked their wares, and upon seeing Call Of The North back in, I quickly snatched that one up. Funny enough, another Ugasanie album, White Silence, has since been fully plundered from the label’s stores, but I got that one way back, so it’s all good. During that uncertain in between however, I couldn’t help but wonder what it was about this album that had folks swarming in for a closer listen. Was it really just that hypnotizing cover art, or was there something more, something deeper, a masterclass of dark ambient and drone craftsmanship that stood Call Of The North above all its Cryo Chamber brethren?

Well, it’s got a nifty little concept behind it. Unlike the explicit narrative of Eye Of Tunguska, this album deals with a unique topic, that of a condition known as piblokto, or ‘Arctic Hysteria’. Essentially, there are reported cases of people going mad during the long winter night, overcome by remoteness and, if you believe in shamanism, the power of aurora. As this is strictly an Arctic phenomenon, most reported cases attributed to isolated Inuit communities and early European explorers, it’s not widely researched, with some experts doubting its status as a mental condition at all. Still, worth exploring through ambient drone, where one’s psyche is already overcome by sound.

Call Of The North traces the path of succumbing to piblokto. The first few tracks set the mood (Without The Sun, Aurora), segueing into the album’s centre as the condition takes hold. This includes an actual recording of a yukutish man taken over with Arctic hysteria (erm, in the track Arctic Hysteria), in the form of singing as dogs bark and a fire crackles – so very Biosphere. Finally, the album ends in Freezing and Cold Wasteland, wherein I picture our sufferer followed that calling of the north too far into the icy plains of the poles. Darn tricksy aurora.

Ugasanie - Eye Of Tunguska

Cryo Chamber: 2015

Is there any landmass more inhospitable and devoid of humanity than the Siberian plateau? Right, Antarctica, but the polar continent has an allure, a challenge for the human spirit; a realm where you can see unique fauna and frozen wastes unlike anywhere else on the planet. What does Siberia have? Dense woods, peat bogs, brutal winters, and more bugs than all the grains of sand in the world, the region a nearly impenetrable fortress of human misery. A perfect place for sending your criminals and prisoners, but horrible for the tourist industry.

There’s one area, however, that’s captured the imagination of astronomers, speculators, theorists, and artists, known for an event that was as catastrophic as it was mysterious. All the early expeditions were able to find at ground zero were thousands upon thousands of blasted, dead trees, some still standing but charred to a cinder. With no signs of a crater, science guessed it was caused by an exploding chunk of space rock or ice, one that detonated before it even impacted upon the ground. But surely something that explosive would have left an impact mark, the world thought. Given that the Tunguska region was remote even by Siberian standards though, very few expeditions followed-up on the event.

As such, the Tunguska Event entered contemporary speculative fiction lore, a sci-fi trope probably only outrivaled by Roswell. Many an author, comic, TV show, and video game dealing with aliens references it, a tantalizing region to hang a conspiracy theory on. What better, isolated area for governments and E.T.s to convene than this, plotting world control and humanity misery? Right, Antarctica again.

Some musicians have also namedropped Tunguska, including Tomita, Alan Parsons, Cymbals Eat Guitars, and a few metal bands too. This here Ugasanie, whose brand of dark ambient typically focuses on the furthest regions of European hinterlands, would naturally have his say in Siberian folklore. Rather than rehashing the same ol’ event though, Eye Of Tunguska instead recounts a smaller, intimate occurrence, involving a group of hiking students eager to see the epicenter. Losing their way as you do in the middle of literal nowhere, they were never heard from again, their bodies eventually recovered at a nearby abandoned geological station, mutilated and covered with radiation burns. Wait, is this fiction, or did this really happen? If so, day-um…

The album’s essentially a dark ambient score to the story, each track another chapter (The Taiga, Lonely Winter Hut, The Phenomenon, Last Night, Attempt To Contact, The Bodies Under The Snow, and so on). Sounds mostly consist of eerie tones, desolate drone, and sparse field recordings, all with a sci-fi undercurrent of nervous curiosity and tense exploration. Even with a concrete plot as a backbone, Ugasanie leaves his tracks plenty open to interpretation in what’s unfolding, making Eye Of Tunguska the sort of CD that demands one’s full attention for the best results. If you’re willing to take this trip to Tunguska, anyway. Antarctica don’t look so bad now.