Igor Krutogolov - "White"

This one for igloomag.com, "touched up" by Pietro.

Here's an album that doesn't give you much to go on. No track titles, a booklet of blank white pages, and little else. It even starts nondescript, with a reverbed keyboard loop and environmental sounds that slowly, ever so slowly, find each other. Track 2 brings in strings, flute, and some operatic vocals. Track 3 invites an irritating, directionless clicking noise to the mix, along with some far-off wailing. What begins as strangely relaxing becomes quite annoying. And that is the really frustrating thing about White --for every really pleasing ingredient, there's something totally annoying going on at the same time --and it is impossible to ignore anything annoying. So White ends up being kind of a mixed bag, an evolving ambient soundscape that pleases while it detracts.

After the triumphant, majestic climax that is track 6, the track 7 denouement has that misplaced flute again, and then 30 minutes of unpleasant silence.