Etudes is Yalivec’s sophomore album. His 2021 album Still Life came out on Polar Seas Recordings and has long since been sold out. Yalivec’s more esoteric electroacoustic project with guitarist Sergey Yagoda is called Gamardah Fungus and exorcizes a more cosmic and heavier consciousness. Etudes is remarkable in it’s ability to walk a middle path between the overtly melodic and arpeggiated Still Life and the heavy duty experimentalism of Gamardah Fungus. 

An etude, in musical language, is generally a short exercise designed to improve the player’s skill. The skill, it seems, that Yalivec is improving here is his ability to see clearly. Not ahead into some unknown future, but to see clearly into the present - a present, that on good days, is full of the chirping birds and prairies alive in some kind of eternal autumn afternoon that are full of life. And perhaps, no matter what happens, there will be artists like Igor Yalivec - capturing those moments and stretching them into eternity.