by John Bush
This second installment in what Kim Cascone terms the blueCube Triptych is another work of isolationist, experimental ambience inspired by the late-'60s dawn of computer music. Fittingly, Cascone's ode to the era -- a time when the Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey epitomized the future-shock wariness that computers would gradually take over their human creators -- is a set of dark, paranoid, wind-blown computerscapes, evocative either of deep space or the uninhabited polar regions of Earth. Titles like &vortexShedding (simplex)& and &nullDrift& articulate the feelings conjured by the music, and on the latter, Cascone seems to channel between interstellar radio waves as though he's scanning the heavens for signs of intelligent life.