Overview

THIS RELEASE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE FROM THE BOLTFISH CATALOGUE ON CD. HOWEVER, YOU CAN STILL PURCHASE IT DIRECT FROM US VIA DIGITAL DOWNLOAD AND FROM A RANGE OF ONLINE RETAILERS.

"Complex and very experimental, Yvat's IDM is built like a fresco." - Chroniques électroniques

"Kunzite is quality glitchy electronica composed with style and finesse" - Norman Records

"Boltfish have just published their most compelling record yet." - The Milkfactory

Tracklisting:

1. Augen Gneiss
2. Feldspar
3. Syncline
4. Corymb
5. Turmaline
6. Pitch Lever
7. Foible
8. Knotting
9. Aconitine Cloud
10. Acrimony
11. Silkworm
12. Clypeaster

All tracks © Yvat/Boltfish Recordings 2009

Description

Boltfish Recordings welcomes Yvat and his brooding album 'Kunzite' which presents a combination of complex glitchy beat programming, darkly atmospheric textures and subtle melodic elements.

Intersecting angular lines, warm yet melancholy synthesizer melodies, wheezing pads, mechanical clicks and whirrs, juddering broken rhythms and granular slivers of digital texture, are all expertly constructed and balanced to form beautifully menacing soundscapes.

This album is presented in a Digipak.

Media

Related video
The video below is taken from 'Subliminal Crush', a stop motion animation project featuring music by Yvat.

Reviews

Heathen Harvest
"Yvat is a one-man project, which again proves us that to create a person needs practically noone apart from himself, his imagination, feelings and ways to express. Yvat is a sound designer with an experience of more than 10 years and more than 20 albums behind his shoulders. He has been staying on "development and research" path during all those years and he still does, which means continuous growth and progress. This time an album is issued on a well-known within the scene Boltfish Recordings from the UK, which gave us an opportunity to know also such amazing artists as Z-Arc and more.

Yvat is an IDM/glitch project, but it stands aside the whole crowd of bands that seem to form a kind of community and scene within industrial direction and cooperate from time to time. But that is not the thing that makes Yvat unique. Yvat is recognisable by its fanciful sound designs, insinuating and calm atmosphere, seriousness and cold reckon with complete absense of black and gloom motives, which present in industrial bands that may be considered somewhat similar to Yvat – like it is beyond negative and positive. It certainly makes you able to perceive this music being in different moods and during different periods of the day.
Yvat is well-ballanced and well-ordered and chaotic only within certain frames. Listening to each track you cannot help wondering how it is possible to create so various, rich and complicated structures featuring quite the same set of sounds. The tracks on the album are mostly rhythmic patterns and if I had to transfer them into a drawing, I would definitely get a complex ornament with many details – razzle-dazzles, strokes,–sometimes cold and sharp and sometimes warm, soft and smooth just the same as sounds, forming the whole picture. As ever the album is very atmosphreric – sometimes it is not a plain rhythm, but a rhythm combined with synth ambient background, quite melancholic and very aerial, which brings the thoughts of the past that seems to be mixed with the rhythm of the current days.

Again we got a beautiful masterpiece. Yvat is one of the bands which I’m very keen on, trying to keep a track on the releases from him and get in touch with this music as soon as I have a possibility. You are always aware that you will get an experience you will hardly let passing by your mind and heart. So was with the first album I heard from Yvat (it was Chroma for me), and so is with each next album of Yvat that I get to know."

Smallfish
"There are some artists and labels that still put out wicked crunchy electronica vibes on a regular basis. And for that I thank them. Yvat is one such artist and, of course, Boltfish is one of those labels. Here we have a selection of cuts that are on the darker and slightly more experimental side of the sound yet they manage to retain a familiar and friendly sound at the same time. I’m not quite sure how this is achieved as on the surface these works are rhythmically complex and full of abstract edits and arrangements. Everything comes together though and gels into a fully formed and compelling album. The one key ingredient is those beats – downbeat for the most part but with more uptempo moments – and that solid foundation allows Yvat to construct engaging and, it must be said, downright weird tones and textures on top. There’s a pleasingly old-school feel (well, 8 or 10 years ago isn’t exactly ancient, I know) but with a contemporary style. It’s that style of electronica that I feel totally comfortable with but am still intrigued by after all these years. For fans of the other Boltfish output or Cactus Island as well as, particularly, the Soundhacker / Amp Bit If Go releases this is a real goodie. Great work as always."

Cyclic Defrost
"...With icy, highly detailed tracks such as ‘Augen Gneiss’ and ‘Syncline’ balancing sharp-edged, coiled and meticulously sculpted broken rhythms with the wash of forlorn melodic synth pads, the entire resulting hybrid rolls with a sense of underlying hip-hop swagger."

Chroniques électroniques
Translated from original French Review
"In addition to being a talented sound designer, the Romanian Yvat is also a composerr and producer. His many productions on the Belgian label Subliminal Tape Club or on the British label Experimental Seafood have steadily grown in quality. Yvat has also collaborated with Black Moon, a young virtuoso animator. Their work together was well received by specialists in the genre, notably around the time of the Sonar festival in Barcelona or the Transnumériques festival in Paris.
Yvat has now joined the excellent Boltfish label, one hopes to reach even greater heights.

There's something geometrical in the motifs explored by Yvat. The various elements are opposed in parallel, whilst they cross and bind to give sinusoidal roundnesses to this veritably analogical orchestra.
When the elements collide, they form an ameliorated one.
Complex and very experimental, Yvat's IDM is built like a fresco.
The treatment of beats is extremely varied and shows exceptional programming work. The dark environment of textures is combined with the rich basslines. Melodic elements are stripped back without concession allowing a sparkling coldness to reign within this album.
The genius of Yvat reaches its peak when environments are made menacing as with Aconitine Cloud, Knotting, Turmaline, Feldspar or Syncline.
Only very seldom do the tracks exceed four minutes in length. It would have obviously been appreciated if some were even developed but it is necessary to acknowledge that by not doing so, Yvat never sinks into digressions and deviations that are often the comfortable territory of an electronic artist who has been producing for years.

This is an exceptional album to the credit of the brilliant Boltfish label. Murray Fisher (Mint) and Will Bolton (Cheju) have already shown us that they themselves are also greatly talented composers and producers. As the heads of their label, they also show great skills in unearthing nuggets like this brilliant alloy between synthetizers and machines.
Hats off to you Sirs."

Norman Records
"Don't know much about Yvat but the first track on 'Kunzite' sounds great to me! Yvat is some kind of super skilled producer from Bucharest who has his own sound design company and an esteemed reputation in the field of electronics and sampling. It's no surprise to hear that this guy really knows his bleeps and glitches. 'Kuntize' is quality glitchy electronica composed with style and finesse, combining beautifully subtle sweeping melodies with analogue squelches and razor sharp beats. 'Augen Gneiss' kicks things off in impressive style. 'Feldspar' brings the tempo up a few bpm and 'Syncline' brings the spooky ambience that wouldn't sound out a place on the best Aphex Twin and Autechre L.P's. Less obvious comparisons would be the early Remote Viewer L.P's and elements of Arrowvain. All of the tracks here have something to offer and clearly showcase Yvat's intelligent compositional style an insanely complex beat programming skills. If you are a fan of the early Warp releases and have a special place in your heart for all things Glitch-tronic you should check this out."

Themilkfactory - 4.7/5
"Although a new addition to the ever expanding Boltfish roster, Yvat is far from a new comer, having under his belt a considerable amount of albums, EPs and compilation appearances. Hailing from Bucharest, Romania, where he manages his own sound design agency, Yvat, born Octavian Justinian Uta, released his first album, Concerto For Violin And Analog Orchestra, in 2003 on Birmingham-based imprint Experimental Seafood, and since went on to work with Subliminal Tape Club, Cactus Island, +G6PD and Envizagae or Patpong Records.

Right from the onset, Kunzite is a gritty and angular affair, where cold mechanical structures drive the momentum while more subtle touches bring unexpected glimmers of emotion and warmth throughout. Using sharp rhythmic sections and crystal-clear sounds, and applying onto them clever little melodies, Yvat creates a series of complex miniature universes which are, at times, very reminiscent of Autechre circa Trip Repetae/Chiastic Slide. Indeed, Uta shares with the British duo a flair for bringing soulless electronics to life and giving them various amounts of emotional charge, not typically through sweeping arrangements or tricks of the melody, but through sound design and placement.

Uta’s first few releases borrowed a lot from classical music, and here, it seems as if the same musical rigor serves as the backbone of this record. While sounds often affect each other over the course of a track, each one occupies a particular space here, as if it alone determined the overall structure of its parent track. By keeping his compositions below the five minute mark, Uta manages to create an impression of almost permanent change here, each track sounding very distinctive, yet, the overall album sounds extremely consistent both sonically and concept-wise, ensuring there is a constant flow from beginning to end, with no dead moments to be heard.

In the six years he has been releasing music, Yvat has covered an impressive amount of ground. As a result, Kunzite sounds both mature and fresh, fuelled with a great amount of creativity and direction. In the process, Boltfish have just published their most compelling record yet."

Textura
"Over the course of many years, Boltfish has built up a reputation for pristine, melodic electronica. Kunzite, by Bucharest, Romania-based Yvat (Octavian Justinian Uta), doesn't wholly depart from the formula but roughens it up considerably and is all the more appealing for doing so. The album's glitchy tracks crawl like marauding colossi laying waste to already-barren landscapes, in large part because Yvat anchors Kunzite's brooding atmospheres and inflamed synthesizer melodies with clanking broken beat patterns that give the album's dozen cuts serious heft. The head-nodding rhythms that lend "Syncline" thrust sound as if Yvat constructed them from samples of knives being sharpened while the mechanical, whip-crack beats in "Knotting" and "Acrimony" hit hard in a way that recalls Tri Repetae (admittedly the style gets pushed to a too-hyperbolic extreme in "Turmaline"). Not just the beat programming but the sound design too is razor-edged, and consequently a track such as "Feldspar" exudes a menacing and viral character not typically heard in a Boltfish release. Kunzite hardly sounds like the work of a novice and it isn't: Yvat has worked as a professional sound designer for over ten years, and lists a catalogue of more than twenty solo releases among his credits, not to mention appearances on several compilations and collaborations with visual artists. Arguably his most audacious release would be the 2003 debut album Concert for Violin and Analog Orchestra, a work built around heavily-processed violin lines and analogue synthesizer tones. "

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