Kim Cascone - CathodeFlower (1999)

This second installment in what Kim Cascone terms the blueCube Triptych is another work of isolationist, experimental ambience inspired by the late-'60s dawn of computer music. Fittingly, Cascone's ode to the era -- a time when the Hal 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey epitomized the future-shock wariness that computers would gradually take over their human creators -- is a set of dark, paranoid, wind-blown computerscapes, evocative either of deep space or the uninhabited polar regions of Earth. Titles like "vortexShedding (simplex)" and "nullDrift" articulate the feelings conjured by the music, and on the latter, Cascone seems to channel between interstellar radio waves as though he's scanning the heavens for signs of intelligent life.