Just put that title through Google translate, and i think i know less now than i did before. Judging by my experience to date of Night School's unearthing of Svitlana Nianio and Oleksandr Yurchenko's collaboration from 1996, it's quite clear I do not know yak. At all. Recorded in an abandoned park in Kiev, Zynayesh... is a sense bending experience, avant garde in its construction,so very singular and of itself, but highly emotional, too. Nianio's voice is quite the spectacle, either conjuring her own mystic glossolalia or a possibly sinister or erotic nursery rhyme form of incantation - since i don't speak Ukrainian, i'm happy to assume it's both, but maybe neither! A more familiar reference point might be Liz Fraser, and musically there's a little kinship with the more outre strands of early 4AD - Pieter Nooten, Michael Brock, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares... They're somewhat loose associations however, the comparison more emotional than sonic. I didn't really wanna use the word 'otherworldly', but it's hard to avoid with music that seems to have beamed in from an entirely different time (literally) and space. Not because it's Ukrainian, but because the little context and understanding of provenance we have do not prepare you fully for it. In some ways it reminds me of the Nurse With Wound list, the disorientation of the unfamiliar, the eternal appeal of not knowing. A truly unique record, which isn't really that common a thing
Svitlana Nianio & Oleksandr Yurchenko - Znayesh Yak? Rozkazhy
£19.00
| Share on: |
