It is good to see Macro/micro and Tommy Simpson finally join forces. For those who read our blog carefully both of these names sound familiar. Moreover, these attentive readers already know they belong to the same person – an immensely talented LA-based film composer and electronic music producer. Tommy is known professionally as Tommy Simpson when he works on film scores and prefers to call himself Macro/micro when he lets his creative mind roam free, which results in music that is often hard to categorize but easy to get puzzled and hypnotized by.

So why is the score written for "Streets Loud With Echoes" (more on the film later) credited as both Tommy Simpson and Macro/micro? Let's listen to the composer himself.

Now let's get to the film that the music adds another dimension to. And again – it's better to quote Tommy (who is really good with words, not only with synthesizers and effect pedals!).

The soundtrack opens with "Oyan" and "Qazaqstan" – two compositions that serve as a nod to the political movement "Oyan Qazaqstan" described above.

"Oyan" is based around a texture, gloomy and impenetrable as the night that covers the whole of Kazakhstan when the darkness comes. The beeping synths set against this background can be interpreted as fireflies in the night – glimmers of light and hope.

The textures in "Qazaqstan" intuitively feel more complex and manmade – it's like we are transported from mother nature to the urban areas where the film's (and album's) stories are going to unveil. The soundscape feels colder and more hostile, but the guitars that appear closer to the end of the song add a touch of human warmth. It's like we're looking at the houses of sleeping Almaty from a blacony – first with the dead eye of a film camera, and then our heroes from "Oyan Qazaqstan" appear in the picture, laughing, lighting their cigarettes, talking with passion and looking at the city with their burning eyes.

The next composition is "Balaclava". According to Tommy, it is "referencing the fact that whenever protests arise in the country (no matter how innocent or peaceful), they are usually violently broken up by paramilitary officers wearing balaclavas". We hear muffles voices, metallic doors clanking, but – louder and more persistent than anything else – the mechanistiс marching sounds of the police forces.

After this comes a moment of calm – "Tengri". It is the name of the all-powerful deity (or, rather, personification of the universe) in traditional nomadic beliefs of various peoples, including еру followers of Turkic and Mongolian religions. The song with its sunny soundscapes serves as a sort of cleansing moment after our heros had come to face the forces of evil.

"Entropy"'s cold and abrasive textures refer to "the splintering of the "Oyan Qazaqstan" group into competing ideological camps, as seen in the film." As Lenin said of his Marxist peers, "Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation." However, the music takes this idea to a deeper level. Its name and the character of the music symbolize the inescapable force of nature that causes everything that's bound together to fall apart over time.

"Alone" embodies the state of our heroes after entropy's work has been done. Synths hum like broken wires, keys play the loneliest of melodies and the track seems to go on forever, like the feeling of loneliness often does.

"Indiscriminate" is the probably the harshest and the most uncomfortable piece on the album. It is used in the "scene where police are indiscriminately grabbing people off the streets and bringing them to jail during minor protests, whether or not they were participating." With every coming second you feel more and more like the limit of tension has been reached, and there is no way the track can go on like this. But it does.

"Igla" references the tone of music from the iconic late-Soviet film of the same name starring Viktor Tsoy from the band "Kino" – the fathers of all Russian doomer bands that are now gaining tens of millions of streams all over the world.

"Hero" is multilayered, ethereal and haunting. Its music keeps expanding, like it's planning to take over the whole universe. On calmer and more intimate moments the track doesn't get small – it feels more like our angle has shifted. It's like we're watching an expanding galaxy from a spaceship flying away from it. The track is a "leitmotif for Denis Ten, the olympian figure skating champion from Kazakhstan who was murdered in broad day light by petty thieves, which kicked off the whole police reform movement."

Optimistic "Almaty" is built around a more complicated version of heartbeat symbolizing director Katerina and her first child – two hearts beating as one in the middle of the screen as the film is coming to its end. The album, like the film itself, closes on a hopeful note.

It is remarkable how Tommy Simpson managed to come up with compositions that make us look deeper into the nature of things, when they accompany these relentless scenes from real life. Movie directors are equipped with cameras that reflect reality in the way we can see it with our eyes. Composers are equipped with humming synths and singing guitars that let them look deeper into things that surround us, peeling off the layers of reality that cameras can't reach. As a bonus, if this music was written with pure heart and real talent, it works out of all context as well. And this album can provoke all sorts of emotions even if you haven't seen Katerina's film (which you should). Hopefully the album will live on both as part of the film and on its own.