YVES MALONE “Immortal Death” C40 (Third Kind Records)

 

Everything about Immortal Death absolutely reeks of stylization, from the faux-horror-movie-poster j-card (Tiny Little Hammers ftw) to the faux-horror-movie soundtrack it probably purports to be. Make no mistake, Yves Malone has worn his influences on his sleeve before (I mean, Three Movies, amiright?), so the fact that Malone is back to drawing water from this well, one filled with giallo, John Carpenter, and Tangerine Dream, as well as contemporaries like Umberto, should not only be the most unsurprising turn of events but also an invigorating jolt to us COVID zombies hunkered in a state of utmost malaise as we quarantine in place. Unless you live in Florida of course, and you’re just out doing whatever the hell you want to do. I live in Florida. Sigh.
 
I need an escape then, and Immortal Death provides. Listening to Yves Malone often simply feels like I’m watching a film with my ears anyway, so that’s the easiest place for my mind to go. Everything happens at night, when the darkest deeds are carried out and the seediest characters flit from shadow to shadow. The synth-prog score – “all hardware, all night” – punctuates the darkness with neon reds, the expressive instrumentals rippling in the rain and gathering under the moon. I’m at a drive-in in the 1970s, in some alternate America where European exploitation flicks top the box office. I’m steamrolled by smut but buoyed by the slick tunes, pumping life into these old veins and energizing pleasure receptors. I need an escape then, and Yves Malone provides.
 
Yves Malone always provides.
 
https://yvesmalone.bandcamp.com/
 
https://thirdkindrecords.bandcamp.com/
 
--Ryan

YVES MALONE “Moonday Tides” (Data Airlines) “Boneblack” (Tymbal Tapes)

Strap on that tank helmet, redshirt, and get ready to enter the fray, because Yves Malone is back, big time, with two new tapes, one on Marseille-based Data Airlines and the other on Tymbal Tapes out of Lincoln, Nebraska. It’s almost a guarantee that the result of your listening experience will be your reconstitution as a puddle of goo on the floor of your apartment, nothing left for the CSI team to comb through except the pool of viscous fluid and the empty tank helmet in the middle of it. That’s seriously what you get for wearing that shirt to a Star Trek theme party – one that you even threw! That was bad planning.

Anyway, I haven’t even listened to the new tapes yet, and I’m already 100% sure I’m into ’em. Yves Malone has a pretty vast catalog, and it just continues to grow. What’s weird is that, once these bad boys hit my inbox, I was like, “Huh, we haven’t heard from Yves in a while – glad he’s back.” Then, to fact check (or in this case totally debunk) that thought, I did some research, and it turns out that Death House 4 came out back in December – five months ago! I even wrote about it! After realizing my internal gaffe, I took a long look at myself in the mirror and considered once and for all that stumbling into middle age isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Is there some sort of memory-enhancement medication I can take as I age? I mean, I’m totally going to counteract it with my enthusiasm for craft beer, but still, I could use some assistance, apparently.

So maybe I should listen to these things, and as I’m typing this, I’m already neck deep, so my responses and reactions here are valid and true. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Malone’s a synth maestro, that’s Italian for “master,” and whether you say it in English or Italian (and we’ve adopted maestro into English anyway, so it’s almost redundant to say it both ways [and would you even begrudge me some redundancy?]) it still applies to Yves. There’s a spectrum covered throughout Moonday Tides that would leave many other electronic purveyors insanely jealous of the skill on display here – Malone’s able to craft vast and fantastical narratives from wordless synthy-tronica, often packing in multiple parts into amazing and vibrant suites, such as “Dromedary Wet Nap” and “The Court of the Whore Queen.” And “The Mark of Saint Gildud” ends the tape with ten of the most ecstatic minutes you’ll ever hear on a cassette. Did I say “ever”? I meant “ever.” In italics.

Boneblack is one of the first releases by Tymbal Tapes in about a year, so there’s a welcome return. But scoring an Yves Malone release is the equivalent of winning the lottery – actually, I think my math is off on that one. But still, it’s a cool match, artist and label, and we’re better for it. Foraging through the more remote thickets of the synthesizer’s capabilities, à la the more downtempo The Unfortunate Occurrence of Memories Not Our Own and the Hole That Fills Them (2015), Malone crafts ambient and kosmische soundscapes, taking cues, perhaps, from one-time split buddy Adderall Canyonly. (That 905 Tapes split is, like, one of my favorite cassettes of recent memory.) Over four tracks, the shortest of which misses the ten-minute mark by fifteen seconds, Malone takes us to outer space and back, an astral trip of great intensity, whose magnitude can only be measured by instruments that haven’t been invented yet. … But will be.

Haha, “Kill Kirk” is one of the song titles. Probably why I started this on a Star Trek kick. At least I didn’t say “Set your phasers to fun!” Oh wait, I just did. I meant it too.

Yves Malone

Data Airlines

Tymbal Tapes

--Ryan Masteller

ADDERALL CANYONLY / YVES MALONE “Split” C65 (905 Tapes)

Don’t be a shit. I see you looking at me like that – if you’re wondering why I’m dressed like a killer owl with a third eye, look no further than the cover of this tape, the new Adderall Canyonly/Yves Malone split. Then listen no further than this new tape, front to back. Then look at me again. Pretend like you haven’t been transformed. Pretend like you’ve never heard of Adderall Canyonly or Yves Malone. I dare you. I triple dog dare you. You can’t, because you know why? You’ve been in the presence of greatness. Maybe even in the presence of the Almighty himself. Or at least a minor deity. Probably a minor deity. An owl deity. With a human skull in its talons.

Why so melodramatic, you ask? Because this tape is the bomb-digga-saurus, the tip top of my favorite tapes that have come out this year, or at least in a while. Adderall Canyonly has released a wacky amount of material. Yves Malone has also released a wacky amount of material. Together, they form a synthesizer Voltron of wackiness, and send me into paroxysms of blissful wonderment. Listening to this tape is pure indulgence. Seldom have two such likeminded artists been presented on a split release, and even more seldom have both sides of the split been worth a damn. I believe each side at least warrants that much value.

Adderall Canyonly expands upon his wide-ranging synth soundscapes over four pieces, titled “I” through “IV.” Vangelis and John Carpenter collide with Dieter Moebius (in heaven now) and Klaus Schultze, and by the time you get through his contribution, you’re just freaking loving every second of life you could possibly have. For those in the know, that feeling isn’t an unusual one to get while listening to Adderall Canyonly music – he practically transports you to that plane every single time.  At once bucolic and retrofuturistic, Canyonly’s everything to everybody, and everywhere at once. It’s transcendent.

Then you flip it. Flip that shit, flip it real good. Yves takes all that goodwill and tanks it with “Momes Rath,” a raging minor-key synth clanger that knocks you right out of your state of intense meditative being and into a dark, grotty side street, running from whatever. He doesn’t let up on the midnight vibes, and even manages some great horror soundtrack excursions (“Blackest Ever Was,” “Death’s Lovely Assistant”), to which he is not unfamiliar. And then, check this out – he does a serious Future Islands impersonation (without the Sam Herring part, of course) with the excellent “Til the Eyes Turn Red, Shall the River Bed,” and by the final track, “Last Angeles,” he’s mimicking the incidental detective music from Fletch. (Fun fact: Fletch takes place in Los Angeles, and Fletch himself is a huge Lakers fan.) I can forgive him for busting Adderall’s mood – he kicks all comers to the curb on his side, in his unique way.

So uh – buy this tape. Have you figured that out yet?

And for some reason I’ve decided to dress up like the album cover constantly, and it’s not even that close to Halloween. Who can blame me? Don’t be a jerk about it.

http://www.adderallcanyonly.com/

http://yvesmalone.com/

http://905store.blogspot.com/

--Ryan Masteller

YVES MALONE – “The Unfortunate Occurrence of Memories Not Our Own Bleeding Through, and the Hole That Fills Them” (Jehu & Chinaman)

I don’t think we’ll ever know the origins of the mysterious synth artist Yves Malone, but whether his current output reminisces on a 1970s/1980s Carpenter-esque modular-synth heyday or not, it’s still pretty frickin amazing, with emphasis on the “frickin.” He might be some sixtysomething recluse, holed up in his unibomber shack surrounded by banks of synthesizers, or he may some young hotshot with a laptop and a bunch of German synth records. I can’t tell by simply listening. Maybe we should just ask him.

Malone’s newest tape, The Unfortunate Occurrence of Memories Not Our Own Bleeding Through, and the Hole That Fills Them on Jehu & Chinaman (say that five times … er, one time fast), finds him soundtracking yet another film, the short The Unfortunate Occurrence … you get it, filmed by visual artist Randy Pool and released in 2009. This ain’t no ECHO People, though, or Zenith City (or even Abysscoteque), where the tunes careen and threaten and impact and other action verbs. There aren’t any car chases or murderous rampages or zombie apocalypses – Unfortunate Occurrence follows a much more subdued path, and Yves follows suit with a more subdued soundtrack. This is a head trip, wherein protagonist (I assume) “Julien comes home to a tornado warning … [and] it becomes slowly apparent that the real threat may not lie in the growing winds outside, but in the minds of the couple [Julien and his wife] themselves…”

Even with a wild tornado brewing, Malone still reins in his more bombastic tendencies, and allows his music to eerily waft through the film (which I haven’t seen), setting a pensive mood right in line with the reality-blurring that happens onscreen. The tracks are at once gorgeous and unsettling, and promise danger and rescue at equal measure, as on the weird and terrifyingly titled “A Beamed Man Approaches” and the gorgeous “But the Wind Turned Against Us.” Malone ends the tape with the dirge-like lullaby “Before Releasing Us Under the Wave,” a title both promising freedom from confinement and death (by drowning) due to that release. Creepy, Twilight Zone-y stuff.

I can’t recommend Yves Malone’s work highly enough, and Unfortunate Occurrence continues his winning streak, although manifest in an unusual way. If you want to read more about some of his earlier releases, I’ve provided links to other reviews I’ve written below. Then go out and binge on his discography – you won’t be disappointed.

Three Movies review: http://criticalmassesmedia.com/2014/06/crate-digging-yves-malone-three-movies-box-set-abysscoteque-the-echo-people-and-zenith-city-soundtracks/

Ebony Sunrise review: http://criticalmassesmedia.com/2014/11/crate-digging-yves-malone-ebony-sunrise/

http://yvesmalone.com/

http://yvesmalone.bandcamp.com/#_=_

https://www.facebook.com/pages/JC-Tapes/456670664385280

--Ryan Masteller