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Ukrainian producer Haido returns with Tales Beyond, a full-length album that pushes his hybrid sound—electronica, IDM, downtempo, UK garage inflections—into a more ambitious and world-building direction. Where his past releases showcased technical versatility, Tales Beyond unveils a new narrative sensibility: the album is structured as a constellation of sonic tales orbiting the emotional landscape of a gentle, post-apocalyptic robot navigating love, fear, friendship, and survival. It’s a record that invites attentive listening, rewarding the audience with layers of detail that reveal themselves gradually.
The album’s opening, “My Generator,” sets the thematic tone with clarity. Haido frames love not as warmth but as fuel—rendering it through pulsing low-frequency oscillations, tactile synth murmurs, and harmonic shifts that evoke the flicker of a machine discovering its purpose. The production is clean but never sterile; analog imperfections breathe into the track, creating a sense of humanity emerging from circuitry.
“Cryo Porcupine” follows with one of the album’s strongest narrative arcs. Its shimmering, glass-like synths play against a deep, elastic bassline, evoking the encounter with a creature that appears dangerous but hides an unsuspected gentleness. The rhythmic design is subtle yet intricate: syncopated hi-hats and delayed percussive clicks create a feeling of careful, tentative movement—like trust forming step by step.
“Blue Star” shifts the focus outward to the natural world, albeit a cosmic one. Grainy textures swirl around melodic motifs, conjuring the image of fragile ecosystems glowing in the dark. The track’s emotional pull is understated but powerful; Haido’s melodic instinct is especially sharp here, weaving lines that feel both hopeful and timid, as if aware of the vastness surrounding them.
The album’s middle portion demonstrates Haido’s affinity for spatial storytelling. “Nebulance” stands out for its expansive, cinematic scale—gliding pads, gentle arpeggiations, and softly churning sub-bass design a voyage through luminous nebulae. It’s the record’s most visual track, unfolding like a slow pan across interstellar landscapes. In contrast, “Fragile 92” introduces a sudden kinetic shift. The glitch-driven beat, brushing against drum’n’bass energy, destabilizes the calm established earlier. The main synth motif breaking apart into molecular fragments is not just a production trick but a metaphor for transformation and reassembly. Haido uses deconstruction not as chaos but as evolution.
Then comes “Embers,” the emotional nadir of the album. Minimalistic but deeply atmospheric, it captures the quiet grief of watching warmth fade. Haido’s use of negative space is masterful; the track feels sculpted out of absence rather than presence, like listening to a memory erode in real time.
The closing “Distant Warmth” reintroduces momentum with a steady, affirming rhythm. Its chord progressions carry a duality—soft melancholy intertwined with subtle hope—mirroring the album’s overarching tension between loss and endurance. It’s a fitting conclusion: open-ended, honest, and reflective of the fragile emotional circuitry that defines the album’s protagonist.
From a production standpoint, Tales Beyond demonstrates significant artistic growth. Haido’s textures are sharper, his transitions more deliberate, and his emotional storytelling richer than in his earlier works such as Volley or the soundtrack My Friend, the Black Elf. Yet the album retains his hallmark sensitivity—an ability to communicate vulnerability through digital forms without lapsing into cliché.
With Tales Beyond, Haido establishes himself not merely as a producer but as a world architect. The album stands as a compelling contribution to the evolving landscape of Eastern European electronica: technically polished, conceptually ambitious, and emotionally resonant.
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