Introduction
Artist: Crossworlds
Title / Release Page: Night & Day
Release Date: 2015 Oct 04
Genre: Downtempo / Pop-Folk
License: CC BY-NC-SA
Media: MP3 / OGG / FLAC
Pricing: Name Your Price
Label: Southern City’s Lab
Rating: ★★★★★★★★★
Crossworlds: Night & Day marks the return of Alexey Mikryukov (King imagine) and Iryna Skrypnykova with a full album-length release that has more of a family setting than the previous release: Ivana Kupala Night. This was a release that was two years in the making, and it was well worth the wait.
Crossworlds: Night & Day
This release took Mikryukov and Skrypnykova two years to complete, and as with their previous release, no details were spared in the arrangements, production and engineering of this work. Unlike Ivana Kupala Night, however, this work features lyrics from Yaroslav Strakhov and Lesya Ukrainka in adition to Iryna Skrypnykova’s work.
Originally this work was conceived of for a vinyl release with a day side and a night side, reminiscent of the Moody Blues ‘Days of Future Past’. However, that is where the similarity ends. This release is not about examining human nature, or aging, or any such heady topics. Crossworlds presents us with a set of music that is thematically grouped, but that doesn’t have the feeling of telling a specific story. But that is a point that I could be completely wrong about, as I can only run the lyrics through a rough translation.
What does appear to me is there is a lot of nature-based symbolism in the lyrics: wolves, seeing, wood, sun, silver, moon, ice. The world as we know it is presented through very different symbolic associations for the day and the night.
All of this is tied together by musical settings that carry different tonality and colors: the day being the brighter tones and textures that flow fairly easily, night being darker and slight more angular. The one nod to this recording being cyclic in nature is the water sounds that open Sunwalk also appear at the end of Dawn.
Conclusion
I was immensely pleased to finally have an album length release from Crossworlds to listen to. I really loved Ivana Kupala Night, but was left wanting a lot more from the duo of Alexey Mikryukov and Iryna Skrypnykova. With Crossworlds: Night & Day, this duo has fulfilled that one desire. They have produced a very rich recording that is wonderfully rewarding to listen to. I hope Alexey’s daughter (for who this release was originally conceived) appreciates the work her father has put into this release. It is really an achievement to be proud of.
