Welcome to The Harmonic Series, a music review series - exclusive to Steemit - where I’ll be discussing music across many different styles and genres from metal, to electronic music, to jazz and beyond! I’ll be talking up exciting new releases, some of my personal classics, and anything else that I think is worth checking out. Some of the reviews I share will be brand new, and some will be from my personal archives.
Today’s review is of one of the most interesting albums of the year so far, one that defies genre and disorients in listening:
Yowie - Synchromysticism (Skin Graft, 2017)
Genre: Avant-Garde
Style: Math Rock, Contemporary Composition
I stumbled upon Yowie bafflingly late in my journey as a music listener, but simultaneously, I feel I discovered them at the perfect time. As my own musical endeavors ramped up in intensity with the beginning of tracking on my debut album as Cold Stars, I found myself looking towards other experimental instrumental trios for inspiration, both in completion of the last couple compositions and in production, the aspect of the project that was most daunting, as I endeavored to produce the album entirely on my own. I believe my friend Arlo on Facebook may have hipped me to Yowie, showing me their first album Cryptooology. This album, a classic of avant and math rock styles released in 2004, immediately struck me as one of the most unique and creative I’d heard in a while.
With its barebones production, language of incredibly idiosyncratic gestural guitar playing, and raucous chaotic energy, Cryptooology reinvigorated my love for mathy music and all its potential. It was quite fortunate that soon after I began listening, they announced a new album: Synchromysticism. Even better, from what sources who had heard the album had told me, it was going to be their best yet. If it weren’t for their legendary stature, that might not mean much, as it’s only their third album, but looking at the timeframe of their three releases, it becomes obvious that despite their chaotic and messy sound, the way they go about creating this music is quite meticulous and structured. Take this quote from a Fecking Bahamas interview with the drummer:
“In our 17 years of existence, we have never improvised anything. It is against our religion. We often start with a rhythm or set of rhythms in the most basic form- often times, just a series of accents, and then start dividing, and subdividing those until we find the desired effect. We will have a string of numbers or visually displayed accents on one of our dry erase boards, and we will keep playing it in the band room until it starts to give up its hidden essence. We record every single part we write, and then send it out to the band members after each practice for review. critique, and revision. Then next time we elaborate on what we found wrong or missing with it. We do this for each part, and each composition has dozens of these.”
On first listen, Synchromysticism is unlikely to be like anything else you’ve ever heard, even their first album. Their chaotic idiosyncrasies are of course persistently present, but rather than affecting messiness, they sound polished to a rubbery methodical confidence. Each slide and bend and gesture seems tightly controlled and decisive, giving the sensation of a tense and anxious jerking, tumbling, and acceleration/deceleration. The most immediately apparent thing about Yowie’s compositions is the ambiguity of melody and harmony. Technically, they may be playing “notes,” but it’s the movement and texture of these notes that matter - far more than the exact pitches or any sort of harmonic movement. This takes the form of slides and squonks and bends, that make the guitars sound like they’re trying to be anything but guitars. Rhythmic motion is the central element, and even before considering the drumming, this is clear.
Yowie’s two guitars are panned left and right, and at first the left guitar may be mistaken for a bass, but in watching footage of live performances, one can see that the guitar playing this bass-esque role is using some unusual strings. The right channel guitar plays what could generally be described as a lead role, if only by the logic that it plays in a higher register and plays more distinctly identifiable themes. The interplay between these guitars is equally often that of heavy rhythmic contrast and of mimicry, and each takes turn punctuating points of the other at various moments. The role of the drums is manifold, often mimicking the guitars in phrases and gestures, or providing a background groove for the chaos to take place atop. Paradoxically, in the same way the guitars play at rhythm, more than melody and harmony, the drums often play out more melodically, owing to the impossibility of creating the sliding and bending qualities of the guitars and being more punctuated.
The production on this album is incredibly tight and refined, to mirror the shift in their compositions, but also to contrast the still-present chaos that their present. The panning of the guitars and the clearly separated sound of each instrument leads to recordings that allow a dedicated listener to focus in on different parts and attempt to parse out the details. This is all the more impressive considering that I’m pretty sure this album was tracked live in studio with little to no overdubbing. In particular, the toms sound unaffected and the hi-hat is crisp and expressive. Speaking of expressiveness, the dynamics on this album are incredibly commendable for their depth and variety. Yowie can slam you with hard grooves that bely the amorphous and rhythmically irregular divisions within, but they can just as effectively cause you to lean in to hear the subtle nuances of a gentle clean pattern. Take the introduction of Ineffable Dolphin Communion, in which each phrase fades with a level of dynamic that seems impossible other than through studio manipulation. Thankfully, all this nuance is done justice by the production which preserves the impact and volume range between these extremes.
What Yowie creates in terms of effect on the listener is perhaps the most intriguing element of their music. As pure instrumental music, the emotional qualities it implies are surreal, anxious, and unhinged. The ambiguity of harmony and pitch lay the groundwork for this apparent mood, clearly not atonal or arbitrary, but rather establishing vague and wide tonalities. It’s difficult to discern from this ambiguous tonality whether these compositions were approached as abstractions of melody and harmony, or as timbre, motion, and frequency spectrum content, as in the tradition of spectralism. Perhaps it’s fitting that this music conveys a sense of madness, as the drummer - inexplicably nicknamed “Defenestrator” - is apparently a clinical psychologist. Looking at the notes on Yowie’s Bandcamp page, they explain how they used his “understanding of signal detection theory and delusional mood to convey complex phenomenological concepts in a highly visceral form.” And visceral it is, indeed; despite the surface mood presented, this albums affect can be more readily felt through the physical experience of moving ones body along with the music. It could seem absurd and offensive to some to identify this as dance music, but that might just be what it is, and Yowie certainly present enough driving rhythm to back that notion up.
Yowie have created something unendingly intriguing with Synchromysticism. The album is rife with contradictions: how is it that the intricate and bizarre rhythms and structures can so consistently organize around such a firm pulse? How is it that the anxious and demented sounding atmosphere can be physically experienced as so invigorating, energetic, and even fun and danceable? Even more impressive is that this is all deliberately constructed, and achieving the goals that they explicitly set out to achieve. Yowie are masters of their craft and transcend that craft with a final product that is like nothing else I’ve ever heard. just as they transcend their instrumentation and form to create compositions that defy even the broadest categorizations of rock vs. art music. Synchromysticism is an achievement for the band and for music as a whole, and Yowie should be held as an example for what bands looking to innovate in rhythm and harmony should be aspiring to. This is an instant classic and weird music fans everywhere should absolutely take note.
To buy/stream Synchromysticism, head over to Yowie's Bandcamp page.
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