reviews / 2026

ORKUN A. - Iridescent

Name: ORKUN A. – Iridescent
Item: Iridescent
Rating: 5.5
Author: Alessandro Giustiniano

2026 (Stardust)

ambient

by Alessandro Giustiniano

5.5

The latest work from Turkish artist Orkun Akbal draws its strength from typical ambient devices: reverbs and arpeggios, microsounds and granular synthesis. The title-track packs into just four minutes not the usual drone, but an organic, controlled evolution. The search for a less static kind of writing already emerges from a comparison with his debut “The Age Of Spiral”, where the sonic exploration leaned towards a more monolithic conception. The artist embraces the art of layering, positioning sounds until they seem to merge into a single organism.

Glimpses of light appear in the underwater dives of “Lys”, which manages to say a lot in just three minutes, or in the following “Nothing Motion”, whose synthesizers vanish and resurface in a breath with an almost ecstatic feel. But these are fleeting moments within an ecosystem that doesn't always shine. The closing eleven minutes of “In Full Bloom” try to sum everything up, but the breadth of the form doesn't make up for the scarcity of internal development. This is a composed and measured work, but a didactic one. More than a genuine incursion, it feels like an exercise carried out with diligence but without urgency: forty minutes go by with a few moments of distraction.

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26/01/2026

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Alessandro Giustiniano, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition