review of Merry6mas 2008 fro Mark Barton: Yellow 6 ‘merry6mas’ (make mine music). Now something of an integral feature in our gaff at festive time to be listed alongside the Christmas tree, crap telly and general all around grumpiness – the Yellow 6 musical greeting card is a thing we look forward to with each passing year. Been a bit quiet this year as far as our hi-fi is concerned has Mr Atwood nee Yellow 6 so its with much delight that we have this 9 track collection with which to re-acquaint – not that we do really – honest. A brief background on these limited releases – originally started in – was it 2000 – this CD’s packed choc a bloc with outtakes, demos, unreleased and live material used to be pressed up and sent out t people and persons who in some way had supported Jon whether that be deejays, music press, long standing fans and friends alike – they were in the real world like gold dust. That said this years edition we have happened to spy at Norman records – so all is not lost. As said 9 tracks feature here – split between 5 home recordings, a reworking of ‘phase 1’ from last years Xmas sampler along with Carta, a my space collaboration with LAM and two as yet unreleased commissioned remixes for Port-Royal and Televise. Monolithic montages that call upon the spirits of Mogwai, Roy Montgomery (especially on the hurting ‘phase 1‘), Floyd and Gnac, there’s no doubting that Atwood is the master of the understated both in terms of beauty, texture and atmospherics – melting moods that freewheel between the pensive and the ceremony, his delicately deft appreciation of space and dramatic tension balances superbly to craft out pristine ice carved aural sculptures – ‘in some other‘ is a perfect example of this technique – each dissipating chord hugging fast to the voids creating an almost majestically repose. The home recordings find Atwood in familiar comfort zones armed with a lonesome guitar eking out pining sonic signatures invested with transcendental curvatures – ’burning holes in the sky’ the opening salvo treads the climatically arid regions as were once prowled upon by godspeed, looping free spirited drone chord motifs collide into a delicately ominous storm passing contrasting with the reverb laden tenderness of the lulling ’diamond’. ’L#4’ provides the best moment of these private recordings – bedded on trademarked / classic Yellow 6 ground – brooding, bewitching and beautiful is all we’ll say on the matter. I have to admit that I’m prone to agree with Atwood’s assessment on remixes, I always find them pointless exercises unless of course you can bring some thing to the table the best remixes have always been the ones were the original template is radically reworked to fit an environment previously never considered by the creator. Atwood’s reframing of Italian combo Port Royal’s ‘karol bloch’ goes someway to achieving this – a chilled out celestial carousel of ice tipped crunchy beats and cavernous ambient shimmers. The re-working of Televise’s ‘life on Mars’ is better still, stuttering dub tuned vocals a la Butthole Surfers ’hurdy gurdy man’ replete with huge hulking Cathedral-esque drenched feedback washes give this an epic and stately persona though ostensibly trippy and dare we say hallucinogenic aspect. Described as a my space collaboration of sorts ‘LAM -Y6’ is exquisite – a hazy fuzz fuelled cyclical psychedelic odyssey is brought to the fore that applies the type of fringe re-arranging mind evaporating touches as more commonly associated with Sunray this babe is emerges into a hypnotic dreamscaped gem. The cosmically pirouetting ‘down’ is also worth checking into to – a collaboration with Jason Perez (Carta) – imagine space walking in a mallowy animation coloured by the Beatles blue meanies – say no more. A bit of a treat marklosingtoday.wordpress/2013/09/24/singled-out-missive-148/
Posted on: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 19:41:51 +0000
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