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Surely most of you remember Heath Yonaites due to 'Rim of The Sun', his impressive and highly-acclaimed CD edited last year on Triumvirate. If you're the follower of SDC we expect, you'll surely still remember the review we published about it in our site some months ago (if not, just run to our 'reviews' section and go for it; after that, you can simply assent in an unconcerned style and keep on reading). Well, so as usually we contacted the musician/painter/writer/dozens-of-other-more-things and let him know about it and Heath, being the grateful person he is, decided to sent us some of his other still unreleased recordings for free, not for review, just to give them a listening and share our opinions with him. And one of those was 'Where', a victim of indifference which moved me in a way that made me know I couldn't stand imperturbable without, at least, exposing it to the world through the pages of Sek¸encias. The most ambitious opus of the artist until now follows the succeeding path of its published brother, using again an enormous list of recordings, conveniently arranged as sonic sources, including all sort of strange things such as banjo, berimbau, bowls, dog show, dremel tool, expressway, flutophone, gourdolin, guitars, hand drum, harmonica, mandolin, music boxes, parade, pliers, rainstick, st bernard (er yes, the same st bernard you can see everywhere in his paintings), shortwave, sword, takara flute, theremin, three string thing, ukulele, water tower, woodpecker or xerox machine, to name a few. So, as you can see, the release is in fact a vast blend of musical instruments (in the traditional sense of the word) and of, well, all the surreal rest. But anyway we haven't arrived to the main role of the disc yet: charango. Unless you're an instrument collector, a lover of folklore and world music, or a native from certain regions of South America, you'll be probably wondering in these precise moments what the hell a charango is: a sort of descendant of the Spanish 'vihela', charango appeared in Cerro Rico (Bolivia) around the XVII Century. Similar to the actual lute, the more remarkable quality of the instrument is its dominant metallic-like acoustic sense, quite rich in timbre to the point of being almost noisy or disturbing when compared with other common instruments (in fact, the word 'charango' derivates from the Spanish onomatopoeic term 'charanga', meaning originally 'music made with metallic instruments', usually with a military tone). So, according to the well-known interest of Heath in all kind of sonorities to create his own musical scenarios, you can easily infer why the artist felt the inspiration coming from this 'unifying thread', as he calls it. And effectively, 'Where' mixes all that richness taking us almost literally to another place, something that the title announces and that the name of the six pieces corroborates: 'Nowhere', 'Everywhere', 'Anywhere', 'Elsewhere', 'Somewhere' and 'Otherwhere'. Full of details and with higher dynamism than 'Rim', all of them show a complex variety of sonic registers that, I'm sorry to tell you, I'm unable to expose with clarity in just a few lines. Using electroacoustic concepts, but traditional ones as well, the final product is a model where soundscapes, melody, rhythm, and above all, a fascinating sense of structures collide in a fascinating manner. And what's most important, we're in front of a release that goes further than the usual field-recording composition, but whose peculiar use of the traditional instruments categorize it far from whatever established form of music at the same time: perilous boundaries in the world of sound that situate 'Where' in the middle of nowhere, or even better: yes, in a place, but the major problem is that I can't define it. And even better once more, I mean that MY major problem is that I can't define it nor recognize it. However, never mind who cares when you just can close you eyes and feel the emotive character of the compositions of Mr Yonaites? An emotional quality already present in the Triumvirate edition, but reaching its full plenitude here. Far from the coldness of academicism and, sometimes, of electronic music in general; maybe heritage of the classic influences diluted in the hazardous exploration that the album presents. The question is that if you're expecting another dose of dark layers, this is the wrong choice, since Heath reflects all kind of sentiments with his creations, sometimes mysterious, sometimes intriguing but lots of times positive ones as well. Life is full of different things, and the fact that the artist uses his own name instead of hiding himself behind the usual moniker seems to anticipate that his compositions are self-portraits of his own soul, with all its consequences and facets: light and darkness, worry and enthusiasm, meditation and action, earth and sea. Arriving to the conclusion, about the artwork, whoever has seen anytime the efforts of this man (http://www.yonaites.com/heath/ ‚ behave more or less like regarding our past review if you haven't), definitely already knows the beauty that a simple booklet and a tray card can provide in this case. Again highly inspired by Nature (visually and sonically we can perceive an evident parallelism, so both results fit perfectly), the original art and cover painting were done specifically for the project, so this is a double cause of pride for the fortunate owner of this beautiful, absolutely classy piece of art in all senses. But I don't like to finish any review without having exposed a different perspective of the precise oeuvre, or without having questioned the release or whatever aspect related to it; and as always, here you can find an obvious shaded side as well. In Heath's own words, the own temperament of the disc, which you can't really describe, makes it almost impossible to be published: 'it's not genre specific, doesn't fit neatly into any typical music. It's not ambient, not folk, not ethnic, not acousmatic, not electronic, and so on. I'd call it experimental, but when it comes to labels, they prefer things that fit easily into one genre' (sic). We see dozens of releases every week whose biggest fault is the eternal repetition of standards, to the extent of making them somewhat tiresome, unequivocally predictable, and in the end it seems that the principal guilty may be not the artistic community, but the labels and, finally, the audience, who is unable to spend its money and, what's most important, its time, paying attention to something just different. Fortunately, I can always insert 'Where' in my player and forget for 70 minutes and 36 seconds that, once more, life is a bitch. [Marcos Alcocer] SEKÐENCIAS DE CULTO [magazine & radio] -------- Heath Yonaites has really outdone himself on this six-song cycle of cut-and-paste sound montages. Although Where is loosely based around charango improvisations, the lovely ten-stringed instrument serves only as a keystone to the overlaying structure. Yonaites is tastefully recherche in his choice of sonic media to create the sparse bird's nests of found sound that inhabits his ten-minute plus compositions. The hiss of old 78 records, barking dogs, a dremel (anyone who has ever done serious work on a boat has used one of these) and even the kitchen sink (literally) all find their way into the picture -- among scads of others -- and are tightly arranged with a catalogue of colorful instruments like flutophone, ukulele and banjo, to lend a beautifully profound mixture of the familiar and the exotic. Yonaites' music will make you feel like you are sitting in a dark theatre, watching a Kabuki play ("Elsewhere"), or sitting around an Andean community meeting of elders ("Anywhere"). Despite all of the disparate elements inhabiting Where, its effect is oddly human. The pulsing drums of the African jungle are as clearly represented as the industrial grinding noises of the dark, satanic mills of city life. Unlike other kitchen sink productions that meretriciously parade their lengthy collections of aural bric-a-brac, Yonaites' work doesn't leave you emotionally empty; rather, his themes and arrangements are concise and eternally relevant. [Daniel Arizona] SPLENDID E-ZINE -------- The Charango is a small, fretted ten string andean lute - the cover says so, otherwise I wouldn't have known this. The music played here by Heath Yonaites are six improvisations on this instrument, but he adds a mighty lot of other sounds, from a dog show to a computer and a dremel tool to sword and many many more. It's good that this is mentioned too, since I wouldn't have guessed this from just playing this. Pretty strong stuff here at work, I must say. The metallic sounds of the Charango fed through the usual reverb, in addition with all these sounds, have a quasi ethno sounding but the material is too varied to be just put down as fake ethno or hippie doodlings. Played with a bow, or plucking it, there is a sense of minimalism to it, but again it's the variation that makes it different. Think of Laraaij on Eno's Ambient Series or Micheal O'Shea on Dome, but with a much less rigid mind or, as you wish, a more anarchistic mind to it. It never goes over the top, no noise or real anarchy, but played and executed in a very much controlled environment. And with a nice printed cover, one hardly notes that this is a self-released CDR. Phew. [Frans de Waard] VITAL WEEKLY number 327, week 24 -------- This is my first encounter with Heath Yonaites, a sound and visual artist based in Northbrook, Illinois. The tracks on "Where", his fourth full length to date, are based on a series of improvisations for the charango, a steel-stringed instrument that is open tuned. Yonaites builds on these improvisations by processing, re-arranging or isolating the sounds and using a long list of different instruments, objects and source material (guitar, music boxes, metal bowls, squeak-toy, ukelele, computer...) in order to weave a rich tapestry of sounds, rhythms and musical ideas. The results are quite astounding; Yonaites has a keen ear for mood and composition, often laced with melancholy and mystery. Although the most prominent sounds are acoustic in origin (the strings play a central role in all of these pieces), there's a lot of processing and filtering going on to make this an intriguing blend of acoustic and electroacoustic elements. The six tracks are of a generous length as well (falling between 9 and 17 minutes each), which allows Yonaites to explore his themes at a relaxed pace (none of the tracks are hurried or frantic, each piece unfolds with a slow and steady rhythm), while the music saturates the listening environment with its unique signatures. These sounds and arrangements should prove to be an evocative and rewarding presence for the sound adventurer: Where is an album filled with ideas, mysteries and unusual spaces, and it comes recommended. [Richard di Santo] INCURSION.ORG -------- WHERE was ranked number one (!) on the CJSF Experimental Radio Rankings high 50 for the 4 weeks ending Monday September 9th 2002: It dropped to 16th (still very nice) in the high 35 for the 3 weeks ending Monday September 30th 2002: CJSF Radio - Music Department - Experimental Division - TC 216 - Simon Fraser University - Burnaby BC Canada - V5A 1S6- 93.9 FM cable (Vancouver) - AM940 (SFU) - http://www.cjsf.bc.ca (worldwide) |
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