Distance Blue: Info Audio CD - Stereo A new album by Continuum-virtuoso Edmund Eagan serves up some cool blue sounds. With each track named after a shade of blue from a paint sample chart, the sounds range from airy string-like harmonics, to delicate reeds, electric guitars, plucked strings with vocal formants, thereminish swoops, underwater piano pings, metallic grains, alien sitars, computerish blips, and microtonal scales of unknown ethnography, all drenched in delicious reverbs and mysterious ambiences. Eagan's combination of Kyma (http://www.symbolicsound.com) generated sounds with Continuum Fingerboard (http://www.hakenaudio.com) performances comprises a new musical instrument in its own right. The sound-generating algorithms are variations on a plucked harmonic resonator run through Kyma based Johnston-CrossFilters mixed and sometimes processed by additional Crossfilters. Eagan writes: "Having this Continuum/Kyma system allows me to write music in a much more improvisational way then I normally would in the structured environment of typical computer music generation. The result for me is a very gratifying musical experience, akin to surfing (riding the waves on the edge of chaos)." This instrument takes advantage of a Kyma concept called "hot parameters". Essentially it's a mathematical way to create dynamic responses inside an Kyma instrument design. Because of the speed that Kyma can process these hot parameters it was possible to build an electronic instrument that has similar real-time complex responses to an acoustic instrument. Listen to the accompanying examples (Delphinium and Fountain Blue). This Kyma/Continuum system creates an electronic environment with a distinct and obvious humanistic element. Distance Blue ships in a novel circular metal case, which is both beautiful and functional.