Anova Prod.
Yair Yona : Remember (IS,2009)****/***°
Strange Attractors-2nd edition : 2010-
Promising Israeli label Anova took under it's wing guitarist Yair Yona (12-string acoustic, intoxicated banjo and Weissenborn lap steel guitar), who has developed his own style based upon certain predecessors (John Fahey for his ideas in developing traditions further, Bert Jansch for his charming guitar style perhaps, Glenn Jones for his to a degree comparable independent vision based upon blues and ragtime styles) and upon certain style interests (so of course the early Missisipi & Delta blues and ragtime themselves) up to some examples of the independent/acid folk artists (mentioned by the label were the ultra-somber Godspeed You!Black Emperor), adapted into his own guitar playing compositions.
The bluesy/ragtime bluesy pickings are picked with an explorative use of textures, in a melodical way with a certain happy lightness. A couple of tracks uses certain background feedback sounds as textures as if formed from late and vaguely returned sounds coming from the same string echoes (on “remember”), or sounding like distant slide guitar textures which, like a dog in the distance, formed a response to the lead the acoustic guitar pickings (on the second track), or like more noise-based electric slides in the background, like a texture of an electrified sea under city lights (on track 6). Just now and then a banjo takes care of a second layer. The pickings alone can be distinctive enough not to carry any additional sound with it (like on the faster Bert Jansch-like “Brave Walls). Different also is the longer conclusive track, “Skinny Fist”, which after some picking patterns improvises in a stretched more raga-esque open tuning (a mode which once reappeared in guitarists like Steffen Basho-Junghans perhaps), to conclude this with a very nice chamber orchestration with texturing drum rhythms.
A strong distinctive album which I’m sure will not remain unnoticed too long.
The Album has now been re-released in a second co-production by Strange Attractors. Included as an extra is a 4-page leaflet with explanations on the tracks.
