Fifty-seven beats per minute separate 'Slama' from 'Ryuno', and the whole argument of this compilation lives in that gap. The slow pole belongs to Giriu Dvasios, alias of Evaldas Azbukauskas, the Lithuanian producer who founded Cold Tear Records in 2010 precisely to release his own material: 4:27 at 81 BPM, the shortest and calmest piece of the set, close to a breathing exercise. On the opposite shore, Iminazole pushes 'Ryuno' up to 138, the only moment when the peak-time techno tag carried by six of the ten tracks takes itself seriously. That is the underlying tension: the label itself warns there are no dancefloor bangers here, only an «internal sonic experience», and the numbers agree: 'Senecia' rolls at 82, 'Monday Morning' at 99 and, that spike aside, only the opener climbs past 120.
The second contrast is one of breath. SEN stretches 'Rebound' into 10:12 of deep house at 93 BPM, more than double the Giriu Dvasios miniature; between those poles the record alternates five-minute pieces with crossings like 'Flyover' (8:53) that ask for horizontal listening. The third is tonal: nine minor keys against a single major one, the F of Mikrokristal's 'Wildwater of the Streams in the Forests', a clearing of light in the middle of the woods that its own title already promises.
The frame explains such coherence within the disparity: this third installment arrives sixteen years after the previous one, reviving the series that, by the Lithuanian label's own account, opened doors for it in the dub techno and ambient scene; the concept — organic feel, nature sounds, meditative music — gathers material previously issued by the house. Between 'Rainswept', opening at 124 in B minor, and 'Living in the Dark', closing at 116 after 7:44 of dusk, the record never looks for the middle ground: it lives off its extremes, and that is exactly its charm.
Sources: Cold Tear Records · Bandcamp