memotone - Fever of the World

 Doesn't seem too long ago we were suggesting that Memotone's previous record, Tollard released via Trilogy Tapes, might be a 2024 best-of contender and here we are just a few months later with another long-player to consider. Now on Soda Gong, the shift to a new label hasn't really altered Will Yates' focus (and these past two records surely can't have been written too far apart!), still lurking around the intersecting outerzones that tie together 'ECM-noir' (a term borrowed from the press release, too good not to re-use), modern composition, fractured fourth world ambience and ethnomusicological interests in ways that feel inventive and, perhaps most importantly, characteristically Memotone-like. What Yates is best at is also what defines Fever of the World, an effortless propensity for genre-slippage that privileges sound over the song, disregarding traditional structure in favour of details, motifs, nuance, and phrasing. That's likely an approach adopted from jazz, though I'm not sure I'd call this a jazz record, at least no more than i would call, say, Tara Clerkin Trio jazz, though I would suspect Yates has enjoyed a few Lloyd Miller recordings in his time. Jazz as state of mind in a post-NTS world is about the best I can work up. Thankfully Yates is better with the sounds than I am with the words.