Ryan Summers is a electronic musician hailing from Marshfield, Wisconsin involved in a number of music projects over the years. During the early 2000's Ryan began producing and DJing rave-style trance and hardcore under the moniker Plastic Portal, co-founding the now defunct record label Madness & Mayhem. With guitarist Aaron Kaplan he began producing and performing a unique blend of electro rock in 2013 under the name Cellophane Superstars. In 2015 he released his first folk rock album under the name Midwest Soul Xchange with long-time friend Nate Cherrier. Ryan began releasing synth-based ambient music in 2017 under his own name. On 'Deeply Divided,' Ryan blends his musical first love, the piano, with an arsenal of modern synthesizers. Or, so the story goes.

Reading the one sheet before listening I thought to myself, "Here we go, George Winston with synths." Not so, really. This sounds nothing like dearly departed George, and the synthesizers take mostly a back seat to the piano, adding atmosphere and ambience. 'Deeply Divided' is six tracks of moderate length in 39 minutes and I have to say that I enjoyed a good deal of it. While there is a bit of sentimentality on pieces like "Glimmer to Gleam," it never got syrupy, just kind of melancholy. The sonic build=up and rumbling hyper-arpeggios at the end are likely to dissuade you of anything sentimental. "Unplanned Escape" leaves the piano in the background at first in favor of synthetic flute sounds, but you can't keep a good piano down for long, because by the middle it asserts its dominance again. For some reason though, this was my least favorite track on the album. Still, 'Deeply Divided' is worth checking out, and on Bandcamp, you can always preview before you commit to buy.