Yagya: WIDDTP

Info:

Author:	Alan Lockett
Magazine:	e/i Magazine
Review language:	English
Artist:	Yagya
Rating:	no rate given
Review date:	01 Feb 2007

Review:
Icelander Aõalsteinn Guõmundsson is one of several early ‘00s artists who seemed to have gone off the radar with the demise of the Mille Plateaux/Force Inc axis. His Yagya project made a small but quite distinctive mark towards the end of the MP/FI enterprise in 2002 with Rhythm Of Snow, a recording that contrived to hitch suggestive referencing of the Nordic polar effusions of a Biosphere to the minimal pulsations of Berlin dub-post-techno (see esp. von Oswald, M. (BC/CR, Maurizio) and Voigt, W. (Gas)). Second or third generation it might have been, but it was done with craft and an ear for sounds that departed from the prevailing preset-patch-plugin rife in digital music-making. But then it all seemed to go quiet. However, this quiet was deceptive, for it was not that composition and recording had ceased. Far from it. Subsequent plans to release a follow-up album had been stymied by label trouble (lasting for much of late 05 well into 06), but fortunately the Yagya distress signal was eventually picked up by Sending Orbs, the lately launched Dutch label hosting Kettel, Funckarma, Secede (and Nordic fellow-traveller, Blamstrain, too).

Now it’s well over ten years of course since those initial post-techno channelings and reactions, basic and chainwise, yet the extent to which this Berlin-borne legacy continues to exercise a powerful pull on a new generation of post-techno electronic musicians is both evident and freely acknowledged by them. And Yagya is one of the most adept of its disciples in re-asserting and recontextualizing this shared resource of minimal dub techno and Teutonic deep house engineering, (not to mention a powerful injection of gauzy resonance that might as well be termed “the Gas Effect,” since it is sprung from that grainy veil trailed most notably on Königsforst/Zauberberg). This vein had already been well mined in the late 90s-early ‘00s period, as mentioned earlier, by the Force Inc roster, and Guõmundsson’s new magnum opus (and “magnum” it is, in scope, despite the “minimal” tag) will not interest those who flit ficklely from flavor to flavor in transient taste testing of new forced hybrid electronic strains (be it “doom-house,” “freak-folk forest-tronica” or “enviro-ambient”). No, it is very much still Class of 2001—ambient, minimal, dub, and techno felicitously fused, but this year’s Yagya model pushes further into other areas in and around the template that are not “techno” (and “minimal,” about which more later). Kick drums, for example, no longer seem content to kow-tow to the four-on-the-floor imperative, but strain towards breaking patterns or falling on off or in-between beats to create subtle rhythmic axis-shifts.

Guõmundsson in fact displays a desire to dig deeper on Will I Dream... than in Rhythm of Snow, setting the sonic scene with “Wind and Thunder,” a long fade-in two-chord mantra of background-brooding syn-tone-drone and occluded throb that builds and builds imperceptibly but, teasingly, never reaches crescendo. Then, as all-stops-out as the opener was reined in, “Choose” goes for the jugular with a space-hopping thump-athon of grandstanding abandon, all sky-high and wide keyboard wash and a nagging lockstep basspulse. On “As It Is” a quite different accommodation is reached between the jack and the dive, with all bottom-end rug being pulled out from under but a fully loaded topsoil of densely mulched chords being sprung, and beatbox-styled underpinnings being allowed to range free, flanged and filtered. “We Lose Ourselves” sees serially looped layers of drone and chord-pass shift and re-shift to a depth-sounding bass figure resounding in hypno-bliss. And so it goes until the seemingly endless loops spool out and fade.

As the recording progresses, the thought occurs that Will I Dream... is the nearest anyone has got to an ambient-dub-techno epic (not that anyone has attempted such before). In fact it might be observed in minor criticism of what is an otherwise enjoyable work that there is something of a battle (though since it’s doesn’t prove to be serious, let’s call it a tussle) between the element of widescreen drama and that of spatial minimalism, evidenced in a distinctly maximal production style which tends to want to squeeze sound into every free bit of space - space that strains to remain uncluttered. A touch more variation and frugality here would have lent greater light and shade, and with it greater effect (and affect). And a final note of caution: don’t rush to judge the musical content of Will I Dream... by its sleeve, which resides (probably knowingly) somewhere between twee fairy tale illustration and 70s/80s fantasy art-cheese (almost a Roger Dean update) (Yeah, but it’s still cool as all get out!—Ed.), a semiotic which evokes, for this listener at least, an infelicitously skewed melange of prog throwback, new age dippiness and drug-addled trance fodder, none of which do justice to the spirit of this album.