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Reviews

Yang — Rejoice!
(Cuneiform Rune 524, 2024, CD / DL)

by Jon Davis, Published 2024-10-02

Rejoice! Cover art

Yang has been showing continual growth through the course of their albums, with Designed for Disaster (2022) being an impressive statement of unique musical qualities. Rejoice! continues the development, and also builds on the inclusion of vocals into the music — instrumental pieces are in the minority here. The band’s personnel remains intact from the previous album, with Frederic l’Épée (guitar, keyboards), Laurent James (guitar), Nico Gomez (bass), and Volodia Brice (drums), with all but Brice contributing vocals as well. In addition, Carla Kihlstedt is on board for extra vocals. If I try to imagine what listening to this album would be like for someone who’s never heard Yang, it might go like this. The first track is “Step Inside,” and it’s an intense piece full of guitar parts that come right out of the latter-day Fripp playbook, with fast interlocking parts backed by aggressive rhythms from bass and drums, but the vocals have a hint of Magma to them, and some of the sections are not at all like King Crimson. Next up is “La Quatrième Mort / La Vie Lumineuse” which has a much gentler approach that bridges a Canterbury feel with RIO along the lines of Thinking Plague. “Concretion” is a math-rock workout; “Get Lost” is based largely on acoustic guitars, with a lovely rolling feel that suits the unusual vocal melody, and climaxes with a keyboard that resembles a pipe organ. Other tracks add in heavily reverbed distortion, warped rock anthems along the lines of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, jazzy tunes with melodies from the bass… The point is that there’s a lot of variety, but it holds together well, sounding more like a band that knows what it wants to be but has a very broad definition of itself. Rejoice! is an outstanding album, one of the best progressive rock releases of the year, and certainly something worth celebrating.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Carla Kihlstedt, Yang, Frédéric l'Épée

More info
http://cuneiformrecords.bandcamp.com/album/rejoice

 

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