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.
--Ryan Masteller
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