"I want abstract pop songs, I want to be played in McDonalds"

So go the aspirations of Isambard Khroustaliov. And while there are syndicates of people in Western Europe rallying to bring the hamburger institution to the ground, it seems that Eastern Europe has a much more amicable relationship with such global chains (witness Goran Ivanisevic's tongue in cheek hamburger TV add). Whether this is just disillusionment or simply about having fun in a kind of post postmodern way we simply don't understand yet is up for debate.

Nevertheless barren shards of an undefined musical inquisitiveness pervade these tracks, at once desolate and broken like the vast swathes of Bulgaria, Bosnia and the former Soviet Union and yet strangely compelling. The image of errant teenagers constructing new worlds out of stuff no-one wants to know about is rife.

Fittingly, sometimes it's hard to tell where the artistry lies in these tracks. Khroustaliov considers himself more of an arranger than anything else and in the tradition of Morricone or Kagel he finds inspiration in juxtapositions and coincidences implicit in working with a non-linear medium such as computer music. The first two tracks on the EP take original pieces and float them up against unaccompanied out takes by firstly Tony Williams and secondly Eric Dolphy. The third is a layered improvisation played to a computer game by violinist Fenella Humphreys.

There is the sense that bizarre cocurrences and schizophrenic deceptions abound. What is real and what is true are not necessarily apparent, but then isn't culture's greatest freedom the self evidence and beauty that can often come as a result of misunderstanding?

This CDR is a limited edition of 100 copies, each sleeve is a folded Joji Koyama photograph featuring handwriten sleeve notes on the reverse.