Strange Attractors
Yair Yona : World Behind Curtains (IS,2012)****'
Yair Yona’s previous release showed already Yair Yona’s talent as guitarist and composer, but it was only a few tracks that really stood out and which showed how good he could be. On this new release however he succeeds not only to maintain this status of potential, here he totally succeeded to make a consistent whole, a strongly arranged guitar/composed album from start to finish. There are more orchestrated arrangements this time but most attention still goes to the guitar, where each additional arrangement can only be seen as an enrichment of the foundations brought forward by the guitar themes.
On the first track these are additional textures of some peeping electric guitars as if coming forth from some feedback and responding machine. On the next tracks there are chamber arrangements building up. “Kottke and The Orchids” definitely shows its inspirations from early Kottke. Now, Kottke’s debut showed already very fast melodic picking, but Yair Yona even increases the speed and ease as if going one step further. This fastness transforms then into a playing that resembles the Greek balalaika, and a slide guitar arrangement is added to it. “Mad About You” is the most passionate track so far. It sounds like a wild exotic dance around a person like with a tango, or like a belly dance like Salome around with full attention unfolding her scarf, with fast and pushing strums alternated by a picking melody with arrangements of at first only a violin, which swells very slowly and in different proportions to a bigger orchestral power, adding a few bowed and plucked string instruments here and there, and then an orchestral arrangement that increases the dance effect’s passion, with some wild clarinet too, before quietly returning to the picking resume with the addition of smooth horns. “Miss Fortune (Kaiser's Eyes)” continues with the same orchestral vision, starts with slow pickings, with lots of opening space and played with noble delicacy, to become enriched with an orchestral feeling of string instruments and some harmonising electric guitar. Different in theme is “Poetry Nights In Valhalla” which first picking moments recalls just slightly older blues folk (for instance). It says it is inspired by Robbie Basho’s “Falconer’s Arm 1+2”, a tune which quickly evolves into something else, starting to sing a bit with its melody, with an additional horn melody, then trumpet, clarinet and with small parts of almost orchestral electric arrangements to it. The last track is a simple and charming improvisation on a tuning from Kelly Joe Phelps with some piano by Yair’s mother, recorded and inspired at home in front of the TV, and resembling a pleasant home atmosphere, a very nice concluding ending of a rather brilliant album of its kind.
