hello! my name is yuri.
i’m creating good sounds. welcome to my site!

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  • Salvatio: In the Mist of Dawn

    Not quite a music-related news, but still important (for me) :-)

    Last night Amazon confirmed the availability of English translation of my debut novel ‘Salvatio: In the Mist of Dawn’ in digital format:

    Since I’m not a native English speaker, I hereby solemnly confess that I’ve used ChatGPT’s assistance translating large swaths of text – a friend suggested me to do so.

    This has sped-up things, but just about 25%. In fact most of the text had to be essentially rewritten afterwards – for weal or for woe, the AI doesn’t make a good literary translator (yet?).

    Due to my ‘clinical’ attention deficiency I might have missed some bad things. I only hope they are few and far between. I must say I’ve fixed quite a few mishaps of the original Russian text, mostly logical shortcomings.

    But please drop me a message if you find mistakes.

    The book itself emerged as a by-product of sorts, as the project was initiated as rock opera, gradually mutating into some kind of a drama stage musical, European-style. Recording the full demo/audio version was half-way through when the Russian full-scale invasion in Ukraine began in 2022. As the wildest dystopian fiction spilled, or, rather, poured into reality, the project was put to ice. The records we’ve done by then are still available at Youtube:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnpuysxgOK8&list=PL2XYIvyj7tLOfxav9-mZpFf4ZG6L763x-

    Sorry, all texts are in Russian.

  • Echogram, by black-sided sun

    Kalamine Records label (Bordeaux, France) just released the next black-sided sun’s LP ‘Echogram’.

    It’s an out-of-band album I’ve spontaneously produced earlier this year.

    Special thanks to:

    Zumaia
    Julia Zaslavskaya
    Sonya Sokolova
    Nick Zavriev
    Nerra Tolstoï
    Surge Synth Team
    Greg Sadetsky

    Check the album below via the link below:

    https://kalaminerecords.bandcamp.com/album/echogram

  • korg wavestation (vst)

    After a lengthy delay resumed patchmaking, taking on Korg Wavestation VSTi. I own Wavestation SR, which is more a preset box than a fully fledged instrument: most of the functions are available, but you have to traverse countless menus using just a two-line LCD (or external devices). Software thingie is much more comfy to handle, but still quite tricky: the synth’s architecture itself is fairly complex itself.

    Dialling a patch is quite a time-consuming thing. I plan to fill all three RAM sections, so it’s another ‘marathon’ for me. Maybe underway I’ll find some extra software to convert WSRAM files to SYSEX ones, if any exists at all.

    It’s kind of shame that the synth is non-expandable (unlike wavestate), but on the other hand – there’ll be no overbloated banks. In the old time synth engineers managed to make their instrument pack a lot of punch with very little wave content.

  • ‘Depth Diver’ video game, and OST

    ‘Depth Diver’, the video game I have composed the original soundtrack for, is out now, and immediately available on Steam.

    Nerra Tolstoï, the game’s developer says:

    ‘In March 2025, while browsing Freesound.org looking for sound effects, I randomly checked the profile of someone who had made a piece of music I liked. I ended up listening to more of his work—and I loved it. So I reached out.

    And what he offered us was honestly unbelievable’.

    Well, I just offered to provide a full original OST for the game, with no strings attached. They originally wanted to use tracks I’d composed decades ago for my long-defunct Decembered project.

    As an avid gamer myself, and largely a DIY musician/bedroom producer, I know the score of doing something for the passion’s sake alone. Birds of the feather flock together, so the process started quickly…

    …and went very smooth, even though it took quite some time for me to deliver all the tracks. The majority of these have been completed by February 2026, with the last moment addition for the game’s trailer produced just yesterday.

    As per our agreement, the whole OST has been published on black-sided sun’s Bandcamp page.

    It is entirely electronic ambient/dark ambient/industrial by genre, and I went hard on custom timbres for various software synths, in particular Surge XT, DEXED and Vital, but also Korg wavestate native, Native Instruments FM8, Massive, and Absynth 5. Other than that, I believe, synths by Full Bucket Music were used extensively, in particular: WhispAir, Oxid, FB3300, Tricent mk III, et al.

    Check the trailer below:

    The game itself – a marine-themed survival horror with solo and co-op modes – is available on Steam right now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2995260/Depth_Diver/

    With this project wrapped up for now, I’m all ready for new cooperations!

  • #opentowork

    After recent wrap-up on some long-running projects, I am open to new opportunities right now as a musician and music composer or a 3D artist – or even both? Well, why not?

    My primary working field – aside from music – is journalism and copywriting, but I would really like to test new waters. This site (https://mirrorheart.art) features my extensive music portfolio – both personal projects and work for the specific customers: music for films, stage shows and videogames. I’m particularly interested in the latter.

    I also act as a synths presets producer with a considerable array of soundware offerings at Gumroad, both paid and freeware. Check the ratings ;-)

    My portfolio as a 3D freelancing artist can be found here: https://journeyman-d.artstation.com.

    Proficient in Blender (still much to learn yet, though), GIMP, Substance 3D Designer and/or Painter.

    So, basically that’s it.

    P.s. My LinkedIn

  • latest

    Had to take my hardware synth to repair shop – thankfully, there are some great and crafty people around here. They have fixed power circuits, which, I’ve been told, were in absolute shambles. Not surprised, since it had been purchased already in heavily used shape, and our cats has done some unspectacular work on its condition either.

    Main outputs need replacing too, but they will come in two weeks or so. Georgia isn’t exactly the place where you have hardware components’ galore.

    Played two shows on a lended MIDI keyboard with VSTs from my laptop. No problems with the latter, but the keyboard is battered and its keys react unevenly on the pressure velocity, with dents and spikes in volume. Had hard and discouraging experience, in fact. Happy to have my keyboard back finally.

    Georgia has altered its employment legislation, so I’ll need to apply for a work permit – it’s after a year of being a one-man-business here, paying all the taxes. D’oh, it’s not gonna be simple, I’m afraid.

    If I receive no permit, me and my wife will have to relocate soon. And I have no clear idea how am I going to do that. Frankly, I’m exhausted to a mess…

    Back to work, anyway.

  • recent events

    Two nights ago, after weeks of idling, played a full gig and then an extra hour with Sombra Del Mar, finishing around 1am. Got home an hour and a half later. Kind of sleepy throughout Saturday :-)

    This year starts with late-night gigs, as we have also played on the New Year night from midnight and until, like, 4am. Kind of a level-up, although I still recall playing with my past bands even later a couple of times.

    With Lacklustre Mirror we have even performed up to the very sunrise once. It was some backwater, sloppily organized open-air with barely three dozen uninspired people in the attendance.

    Yesternight was alright. Some people asked venue for us to keep playing past midnight, and we did earning some extra cash ;) We have now 30+ songs in our roster, more, in fact, than can be played over the single 2h rehearsal or live, and even with an extra time it wasn’t a problem. Fatigue was, though, but it hit afterwards.

    Finished composing a large OST for the upcoming indie game Depth Diver, currently in early access/testing. It is slated for the release later this year, may be in the first half of the Spring. This track has also been utilized by the devs:

    All the others are made specifically for the game. Hopefully people will enjoy it.

    Still thinking what synth should I take on next with making presets. The recent packs for FM8 and Viper took some serious time to do… Yet people seem to be far more interested in presets for Surge XT and u-he Tyrell N6 – I see new downloads almost daily. No surprises here – the latters are free. But also no real idea how to promote these aside from the efforts already undertaken.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • the next move?

    Having finished Rho Ophiuchi and after I finished two more tracks for a current customer I’ll be taking some time away from the music, apparently. A hard problem needs solving soon, and all my attention will be likely dedicated to it. Still I’d be happy to hear suggestions on what synth should I do banks for next.

  • rho ophiuchi

    RHO OPHIUCHI is a full preset bank for Adam Szabo’s VIPER – 128 patches, mostly dialed up from scratch or from each other. There is a few exceptions – more of them later.

    VIPER is a synth that makes a valiant attempt on emulating Access Virus A/B/C/TI hardware synths, and is partially compatible with them. Partially, because it can only import banks ans presets from the hardware, and because not all the Virus’ waveforms are bundled with VIPER.

    Anyway, VIPER is extremely powerful thing even outside of emulation scope with some unique features. For one, it allows to import not only custom wavetables, but single-cycle custom waveforms too, and to use them with both Oscillators and LFOs. Besides, the wavetables, factory and custom, can be used with Grain and Formant oscillators as well.

    For RHO OPHIUCHI 43 waveforms had been created using Vital and Audacity, with a few coming from Native Instruments FM8 synth (barebone TX* waveforms).

    Besides, 32 wavetables sourced from this pack had been bundled with PHI OPHIUCHI.

    What is particularly notable is the VIPER’s low imprint on CPU: mr. Szabo made sure of that. The demo comprises 18 instances of Viper, and this stack still runs smoothly.

    Except for limiters/mastering plugins, no external effects are used.

    Disclosure 1: Several patches have been imported from the Usual Suspects’ DSP56300 Osirus (Virus A/B/C Emulator) then heavily altered. These are: 004. Polar+_PD, 005. TWMangled_SY, 086. TuvaWl_TX.

    Patch 055. JunoStr3_PD replicates Juno-6/60 Strings 3 preset.

    Patch 096. Salomon_SY is an attempt at replication of the backbone synth timbre from the song ‘How Fortunate The Man With None’ by Dead Can Dance.

    The rest are original.

    Disclosure 2: The Usual Suspects’ DSP56300 Osirus does not include firmware of the hardware synths emulated. In my case my friend and colleague Ivan Kirichenko, the owner of The Day of Life Forgotten label, exported the firmware files from his own hardware units and gave them to me. So no piracy here.

  • adam szabo’s Viper

    adam szabo’s Viper

    Bought this beauty just before New Year, and now rabidly stack new patches for it.

    While it can read (with limitations) patches and soundbanks from Access Virus TI, it goes way further: aside from VA oscillators there are Multisaw, Wavetable, Grain and Formant oscillators, and you are not limited to Virus’ hardwired selection of waveforms, as it is capable of reading the custom ones. I’ve made some already, but not too many yet.

    The waveforms are expected to be: mono, 16-bit, 2048 samples long (single-cycle).

    Vital synthesizer is the perfect tool to generate a custom-shape waveform. It can be exported then to .wav (apparently as a wavetable).

    Then enters Audacity which is used to cut, resize and export the single-cycle waveform. The latter is ready for Viper then: it only takes to save it to the right folder.

    What is totally amazing, though, is that these custom waveforms can be used for LFOs as well, and LFOs, in turn, can work in the Envelope mode. Handy, given that by default there are only four Envelopes offered.

    Wiring a full patch for Viper is relatively time-consuming. It’s not Massive or Surge XT, where you can drag-n-drop modulations. Quite unfortunately. Still it’s rather a nuissance than a game-stopper.

    The only probable bug I’ve run in so far is that copying ‘n pasting presets doesn’t seem to work. There is a workaround (via saving individual presets then loading them up to the custom bank), but methink this is not the right behaviour.

    Factory presets are heavy on Trance-like stuff (which I’m no big fan of), but Viper’s capabilities are vast, so it’s definitely not a one-trick pony. My patches will be more ambient/industrial inclined. Well, as freakin’ usual.

    In fact I’ve already used Viper in a track of mine, and plan to do more.

    Thank you, mr. Szabo!

    P.s. As of limitations, well, it is not shipped with all waveforms provided by Access in their Virus synths, hence not every patch from TI can be actually replanted to Viper.

    However, it is entirely possible these waveforms can be founds online somewhere… or reproduced from this chart.

    Anyway, unless you’re clamouring for ‘that very sound’, making custom waveforms is more fun, no?

  • the site reworked and updated

    Just relaunched and heavily updated the website, changing theme/design, removing the redundant section (‘Soundware’ is linked directly to Gumroad now), and making it more suitable for mobile users. So – welcome again!

  • MATRICES: A preset pack for Native Instruments FM8

    MATRICES is a preset pack for Native Instruments FM8 software synthesizer, one of the absolute pinnacles of 6-operator FM-synthesis. The synth is old: next year it hits 20, but the only thing obsolete about it is its unscalable interface. Otherwise it’s still a hell of a synth with a very broad sonic palette, and immense depth. It takes some time to get a firm grip of: FM synthesis is not quite a straightforward thing, after all, and, dare I say, underexplored one. But after some time patch-making for it becomes a very medidative, and addictively rewarding experience.

    Here is a medium-sized (72 presets) pack – a result of various experiments, some of them featured in earlier albums by black-sided sun, but the majority are brand new, designed from scratch. The video features a simple walkthrough, although a few have been missing from the list and one had been altered afterwards. No external effects have been used, and only a part of these presets feature any of the FM8 on-board effects.

    Happy Holidays, everyone!

  • Site update

    Actualized quite a few pages here, including ‘bands’, ‘solo works’, and ‘soundware’ sections. Added all recent releases – it appears I had as many as four full-lengths this year, and the new items at blacksidedsun.gumroad.com. This was a very productive year, and more is in the works.

  • Absynth 5 Troubleshooting

    Finally managed to revive Absynth 5 in my system. Native Instruments dropped it from their active roster, and even those who have purchased it earlier may have hard times installing it on Windows 10.

    In my case it was kinda outrage: Native Access (a controlling/licensing/updating software) would download an .ISO file, then report installing it… without actually doing it. No installation path, and version 0.0.0 was the only things I’d been getting earlier this year. Since I did not actually need Absynth at the time, I abandoned the attempts to reinstall it.

    And wrongfully blamed Native Instruments for this odd behaviour of the installer.

    Then a few days earlier I decided to look into the matter again, as I needed some particularly otherworldly sounds ASAP. The outcome of the effort, I must say, was totally worth it.

    Searching the Web, I have discovered that the core problem might’ve been that in my system .ISO files were associated with a particular software, and not Windows Explorer. That was the most probable reason why Native Access failed to install anything. So this kind of files need to be re-associated to Explorer.

    Second, as Google’s AI pointed out, there is NativeAccess.xml – a configuration file used by Native Access to track installed and registered Native Instruments products, including Absynth. And it may, in fact, block the installation attempts.

    Killing it and relaunching Native Access (which promptly regenerates it) has been called ‘a common troubleshooting step for various product visibility or demo mode issues’.

    The file sits here: C:\Program Files\Common Files\Native Instruments\Service Center

    On macOS: Macintosh HD > Library > Application Support > Native Instruments > Service Center
    Common Uses.

    Unfortunately it was not enough. In order to get launched, it was necessary to literally downgrade it to the version from 2013. Thankfully, NI’s site still hosts legacy updaters.

    Again, as nerdy as it sounds, it was totally worth the effort – the customer of the tracks I’ve produced with it has just confirmed this. :) Even though I’ve basically used 3rd party presets with only minor altering. The synth’s architecture is a bit too non-trivial.

    …I’m very uncomfortable with the idea that Native Instruments’ older synths – FM8, and Massive, – will soon share the Absynth’s fate and become ditched, uninstallable and/or unrunnable on newer systems. The synths themselves may be replaceable to a degree. But not exactly the sounds they are capable of.

  • Chromatography – new presets for Rhodes Chroma softsynth

    ‘Chromatography’ is the presets pack for Cherry Audio Rhodes Chroma software synthesizer. The demo below features several instances of Chroma. Other than a master bus limiter (ReaLimit from Cockos Reaper), no external effects are used.

    Rhodes Chroma was a seminal instrument from early 1980s developed by ARP shortly before their demise. The design was purchased by CBS Musical Instruments and put into production by their Rhodes Division in 1982 – already as the Rhodes Chroma. A keyboardless version was produced as well, called Chroma Expander.

    For its time it was an extremely advanced, polyphonic and multitimbral instrument with velocity-sensitive keyboard. It also sported microprocessor at its core, and could be connected to a computer – an interface card was available for Apple IIe along with sequencing software.

    Only 1400-3000 Chromas and Expanders were built at all, as their production ceased by 1985, and it’s safe to assume that far fewer have made it into 2020s.

    Thankfully, Cherry Audio has reproduced it in software with all the original features, and then some.

    The first impression is that it has a fairly non-conventional architecture, compared to other VA synths. But it is mostly due to a non-standard naming (like ‘sweep’ which is in fact ‘LFO’), and a wide array of signal routing modes.

    ‘Chromatography’ presets are built from scratch or from each other.

    To load them into the synthesizer, unzip the archive contents into Chroma’s Presets folder. For Windows 10/11 users it is C:\Users\<current username>\AppData\Roaming\CherryAudio\Chroma\Presets

    …And have some Chromatic fun!

  • ‘Summa Timorum’ LP is out

    ‘The Day of Life Forgotten,’ the experimental electronics net-label, have released black-sided sun’s latest album ‘Summa Timorum’ (The Sum of Fears).

    As per label’s message:

    ‘Dark ambient, post-industrial, experimental electronics. New album by black-sided sun delivers exceptionally dark and precisely detailed sound scape. An epic, and hopeless, sound canvas, both startling and attracting at the same time.’

    LP was recorded June-September 2025. Voices were generated with Vital software synthesizer and online text-to-speech service luvvoice.com. Other than – and a fragment of AI generated muzak in track 2 – no AI was involved.

    A significant portion of these sounds were built up from scratch in Surge XT. I have contributed them to Surge XT development team.

    Cover and sleeve graphics are by Ivan Kirichenko.



  • Surge XT – patches contributed

    Developers of Surge XT, a fantastic software synthesizer that I use religiously these days, have included a bunch of my patches into nightly builds, which means they will be featured in the next version of the synthesizer.

    Many of those patches have been used while making the next album by black-sided sun due to arrive next month.

  • …

    Autumn hits hard: temperatures are down, if it rains, it pours, and the intense live season is basically through, although Sombra Del Mar isn’t going to slow down: we’ve booked for a month ahead.

    I believe over these recent months I’ve played more live shows than ever before – I mean, probably more than throughout all of my career since early 2000s and until 2022.

    Truth be told, I’m tired. But it is vital to keep going… to stay in one’s place, sane and sound.

    A new album by black-sided sun will be out some time in November, and I slowishly rework an old project that should have been the first but has not happened in time.

    Even though I doubt it matters at all.

  • An anti-AI rant #…

    An anti-AI rant #…



    I’ve blogged recently about the AI muzak from YouTube that I have to hear every time as our band’s scrambling for live performing.

    It looks like there’s kind of a development. Expectedly unexpected – or vice versa: the AI ‘reimaginings’ of classic rock music – or any other.

    I’ve bumped into a flick of Scorpions’ classics… that turned out being AI forgeries. Yes, pretty much the same arrangement, sounds close to the original, but a totally different voice – bland and emotionless.

    In my school days I listened to Scorpions’ ballads a lot. I’m still loving some of those :) So it was enough for me to tell the difference instantly. Love or hate Klaus Meine’s voice, but in their golden days he always delivered emotionally. While the forgery sounded diluted and unnatural.

    But, again, as a musician I’ve got somewhat a trained ear, and have learnt a thing or two over the 2.5 decades of my trade. I can tell the difference? What’s with the other non-music folks?

    In fact I’m pretty sure that a general listener – the one who comes to the public cafeteria to do a jawsjob – doesn’t care. Like, at all. Something familiar is playing? Fine! Not genuine? Whatever…

    And if I get it right, public venue owners wouldn’t have to pay fat royalties for the public broadcasting of this muzak: why? It’s not exactly the Scorpions record, it’s a cover version!

    During my days in University we had a totally fascinating course on history of cinema. Our tutor, a notable film scholar and criticist, taught us not just what’s what but also where exactly should one look to comprehend the art and references in full, and to interpret – and enjoy – it the right way.

    This approach, in fact, is relevant for any art, and music in particular too.

    AI – or, rather, its unscrupulous purveyors – preys exactly on the unwillingness of the general consumers to look deeper and to listen closer.

    It is enjoyable to see at least some push-back from the actual artists and art experts such as Ted Goia. An all-hands-ahoy negativity towards recent AI actress Tilly Norwood (S1m0ne case becoming a reality) also makes some room for a cautious optimism – looks like the people are not quite ready to stomach what is being shoved down their throats.

    Problem is, the opposite side is just as impertinent, bold and arrogant as to force the general public into accepting AI slops of any kind as something equal to genuine human creativity.

    Which it is not.

  • Cold Foundry – a presets pack for Korg Wavestate and Surge XT

    Metallic groans, clangs, tinklings, jinglings, blips, radio static with something alien coming through, – PHI MU LABS: COLD FOUNDRY is the soundbank for KORG WAVESTATE & WAVESTATE NATIVE assembled specifically for creating the unsettling, dystopian, grim cinematic atmospheres.

    It largely consists of field recordings, including those created back in early 2000s.

    Some of them (not all) have been previously published at Freesound.org, and still available there for free.

    Certain sounds are lucky catches, others – like the bowed cymbals – have been recorded on purpose.

    Besides that there is a number of simulated percussive sounds created from filtered noise and with FM-synths, as well as simulated radio static samples in mono and stereo formats.

    Overall this bank contains as many as 253 programs for Wavestate/Wavestate Native, making it the largest pack by the black-sided sun project, even though its sample content is relatively small – just under 150 Mbytes.

    As a bonus, there is a small (36 patches) bank of industrial-themed timbres for those who use Surge XT synth along with Wavestate.

    The demo features several instances of Wavestate Native plugin with only on-board effects.

  • Dronology – a new library after months in the making

    Dronology – a new library after months in the making

    PHI MU LABS: DRONOLOGY is a library of presets for KORG WAVESTATE hardware synthesizer and KORG WAVESTATE NATIVE plugin.

    This library’s primary emphasis are multisamples and programs, as per WAVESTATE’s nomenclature. 16 Performances are available too, but largely for demo purposes.

    Each multisample is basically a soundscape on its own, so the majority of programs represent a single multisample each. Intended for use in movie or stage show productions, and with experimental music genres as well.

    Demo below showcases several of these timbres with only WAVESTATE NATIVE’s built-in effects.

    The library is presented in two versions: for the plugin (.korgcompiledbank) and for the hardware unit. The latter contains all samples in .wav format. Feel free to use them as you see fit.

    Either archive contains .wsbundle files to import programs and performances.

  • Status Update (I’m alive)

    I’ve been pretty silent recently simply out of fatigue. A lot of things is happening, some good, some bad, some neutral. We had a hellish gig last Wednesday, when my keyboard’s LCD display nearly died (I’ve kind of fixed this later), a loudspeaker standing on a subwoofer literally fell off it almost right on my gear (no casualties other than a can of shitty beer). The reason is that the wooden floor of the stage had been replaced with a newer and firmer wood, and it fails to absorb low-freq vibration of the subwoofers, whereas the PA speakers are relatively lightweight. Once we have strapped one of them in place, the other tried to do the same trick. Bah…

    We’re playing tonight at the same venue, and I really hope the owners have already fixed the speakers in place.

    On the brighter side, my free libraries at Gumroad seem to have a steady stream of new users (they are being downloaded daily), and even some sales. It’s appalling though that the majority of people simply download freebies, and don’t care to leave any review. On the other hand, those few precious I’ve got so far are all 5-stars.

    I’m making a slowish progress with two new libs and two new albums either. No idea when I am going to finish either of these endeavours, but I don’t want to force things.

  • 100WT – 100+ wavetables pack in .WAV format

    100WT – 100+ wavetables pack in .WAV format

    100WT – 100+ wavetables in .WAV format created using Vital, by black-sided sun project. Most of them are resampled from the field recordings with bells and whistles added.

    Check it out here: https://blacksidedsun.gumroad.com/l/recjc

    Vital appears to export at 88.2kHz, so there is also a 44.1 version converted using Reaper.

    Compatibility checked with: SynthMaster 2.9, SynthMaster One, Surge XT, SocaLabs Wavetable.
    Partially compatible with Full Bucket Music’s WhispAir and ModulAir. Appears to be loading up only some part of the wavetables.

    At least two wavetable oscillators in DISTHRO Cardinal (and, apparently, VCV Rack) load these wavetables alright either.

    Z3ta 2+ appears to be loading just one frame.

    Below is the demo created entirely from these wavetables, loaded both in Vital and Surge XT. External effects are used, however.

  • The band I’m playing with these days

    A quartet of expats from Russia and Belarus. Seen a thing or two in our lives, some even more than they ever wanted to. Nowadays we’re playing music that is in high demand, and surprisingly those are rock’n’rolls above all things.

    Frankly I’m no big fan of the old rock’n’roll when it comes to listening, but playing them is an entirely different thing. A cool one, in fact.

    The primary presence is at https://www.instagram.com/sombra__del__mar/

    We had a rather good show on Wednesday, and will come live again on Saturday.

  • Recent albums

    Static Apparitions has hit 202 collections on Bandcamp now.

    The highest score, however, still holds 2023: The Longest Road, part I – 312 collections:

    Its followup landed in 274 Bandcamp accounts:

    The long-in-the-work Aurtengwl is in 280 collections so far:

    Other than that there was Detritus, the album released by Russian net-label ‘The Day of Life Forgotten’. I can only see one collection containing it.

    I have updated ‘solo works’ page.

  • Well, all of this really comes alive

    First place in Drone category on Bandcamp, and fifth place in Ambient category right now.

    Also dropped the special version, as promised:

  • Static Apparitions by black-sided sun

    Static Apparitions – a new release of my project ‘black-sided sun’. Genre – dark ambient. Released by Neotantra label (a lot of gratitude goes to Lee Norris).

    Released as free download.

    Tomorrow I’ll launch a special version of this album on my own page.

  • Summa Timorum – a forthcoming LP by black-sided sun

    Dropped the first track from the next album last night. The track is called ‘Sleep’, and the album – ‘Summa Timorum’ (Lat. ‘The Sum of Fears’).

    Genre: Noise, Dark Ambient, Industrial.
    Release: TBA

    The track has been created using Surge XT and Vital, custom-made patches only.

  • A Mad Train

    A Mad Train

    The onslaught of AI upon the music field is staggering and terrifying. Over the last few days I’ve stumbled upon an incredible amount of the low-effort content on Youtube, covering some unexpected areas: there are AI-generated extreme metal ‘records’, AI-generated krautrock, and, of course, tons of AI-spawned ambient. These genres tend to be less formulaic, and relatively marginal, compared to pop music. Yes, probably there are tons of AI-spawned pop too, I just don’t want to dive into this mud. Problem is, there are no extant genres un-parasited upon. And it takes quite a lot of attention to the secondary details, to see that it is synthetic media, not a well-performed, mixed and mastered music by humans.

    In some cases (I strongly suspect that only in some) there is a barely-noticeable ‘synthetic content’ warning in the description, whereas, in my views, it should be on the top and glaring like a neon sign.

    Seriously, I’d love to see an option to filter this content out completely. But there is none.

    AI is a threat. It is not just a new technology ‘to unleash creativity and productivity’. It’s not a printing machine, a stoking frame, or an agrimotor, nor this is a photo camera, or, God help me, a synthesizer or digital creation tools like DAWs and Photoshop. Those are, after all, ‘interfaces’. Occasionally they ended up replacing certain professions, but without actually making humans ‘an expendable ware’, Matrix-style.

    AI encroaches upon doing just that.

    Some time ago I’ve run into two good definitions on LinkedIn: ‘[AI is] A predictive plagiarism engine creating mediocre mash-ups of actual human creativity‘ (by Lauren Beukes), and ‘The underlying purpose of Al is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.’ (by Julian Deleij). Both are spot-on correct, in my view.

    At present it does look like AI arrives in order to to supplant creatives those are historically bad at being controlled. Off with them, then: they have more than enough ‘stuff’ created over the centuries so that obedient, simulacra-spewing mill never ceases production. And why not? – All music had been already composed, every possible story plot has been covered multiple times, there is more poetry in the world than any human can read throughout their entire life, every possible dramatic turn has been explored.

    Besides, the general populace tends to hold everything pertaining to the modern arts in contempt, especially in the less free societies. Everything that is art already exists, the rest is not needed nor wanted. The AI’s products are okay within this thinking framework.

    New technologies surely do affect the progress in arts. Always’ve done. Until the generative AI, that is.

    It is not about leaving creatives penniless (since the emergence of Internet they aren’t exactly revelling in gold, anyway), or altering the ways of creating ‘content’. It is exactly where Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek memorable quote ‘cost of creating content being close to zero’ starts ringing true.

    AI comes to unmake the arts and creative work. And there doesn’t seem to be any emergency switch to stop that mad train before it rams the very foundations of civilization. Probably it is too late already.

  • Finally

    I have a mini-amp for Behringers near-field monitors, but a month ago or so its (lousy) power adaptor went South.

    A new one just arrived so I have the stuff back in business.