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Reviews : We’re halfway through March here in Nebraska, and we’re finally on the cusp of spring, though just barely. As any resident of the state will tell you, noone here really, truly believes that spring has truly sprung until we’re approximately halfway through May. Blame it on a cynicism influenced by unpredictable weather patterns, but I’m keeping my heavy coat nearby, just in case Mother Nature decides to dump another blizzard on us as a nasty little April Fool’s joke. And so, it only makes sense that Yellow6’s latest, Painted Sky, is coming out this time of year. Don’t let that summery, desert blue sky on the CD cover fool you for a moment. Jon Attwood’s wintry dronescapes are still heavily present throughout the disc’s ten songs. It’s often contended that Yellow6’s music is too wintry, too sparse, and too stark. The things that can make the music so captivating and arresting are often the very same things that make it laborious and tedious. Oftentimes it depends on your mood, true enough, and so if you’re not in the mood for some of the slowest, darkest post-rock this side of Labradford and The Curtain Hits The Cast-era Low, you should probably steer clear of Yellow6’s music in general, and Painted Sky in particular. But from time to time, Attwood’s intensive goal of seeing just how far he can extend the spaces between his guitar notes, how glacially he can pace his songs’ rhythms, how much tension he can wring from each note and icy programmed beat threatens to break his songs in two. It’s somewhat maddening, because this approach is used on nearly every single song, with little variety in the method. Individual songs might be lovely, but the cumulative effect can be, well, a bit of a drag. The opening track, “I Know I Shouldn’t (But I Do)”, nears eight minutes as Attwood slowly wring out stark notes from his guitar in a manner that firmly recalls early Low. However, no lovely Alan Sparhawk/Mimi Parker harmonies glide in to offset the gloom. Instead, a keening, high-pitched drone flutters about in the background, conjuring up images whitewashed concrete rooms and abandoned streets—images that becomes even clearer once the funereal drums kick in. “I Loved You More Before I Knew You Loved Me” comes closest to matching the desert imagery depicted on the album cover, with its wheeling drones, Morricone-esque progression, and creeping bassline reminiscent of Mi Media Naranja‘s finest moments. The album’s loveliest and most haunting moments come during “Pleasure/Pain” and “Eighteen Days”, the album’s two longest tracks (and the moments on the disc that might be the most grueling for some). “Pleasure/Pain” starts off slowly, with foreboding drones and only the most forlorn of plucked guitars. Things start coalescing after a minute or so, as a mournful drone surfaces from somewhere beyond the event horizon and scuds across the song’s grey, wintry atmosphere while Attwood pulls notes from his guitars at a sorrowful, elegiac pace. Occasionally, the high drone begins to die down. But Attwood stirs it up again, sending his effects pedals crying into some bitter wind. There’s no forward motion in the song, just a constant spiral of sadness growing ever tighter and constricting until it implodes, revealing fragments of bittersweet memories. “Eighteen Days” proceeds at the same sort of pace, though this time, distant drums keep things moving in a linear progression that’s no less plaintive, thanks to the drones that Attwood sends arching over the song. One can’t help but imagine lost explorers trudging through a frozen, arctic wasteland almost certainly to their doom, their sad fate ameliorated only somewhat by the beauty of the northern lights shimmering high overhead. Towards the end of Painted Sky, Yellow6’s music does begin to drag a bit, to feel a bit claustrophobic due to Attwood’s increased use of drums and programmed beats. Roiling drones seek to break free on “Maré”, only to be contained by the trudging drums. And “Azure” struts along on a trip-hop beat that again feels at odds with Attwood’s lethargic, drawn out guitar chords. Minor issues though, considering how evocative so much of the rest of the disc continues to be after so many listens. Indeed, I don’t think I have any problem calling Painted Sky some of the best music I’ve heard from Attwood to date. Those that might have found his previous album, 2005’s Melt Inside a bit too demanding and tedious will likely be relieved to see that Attwood has returned to form with Painted Sky, and then some. OPUSZINE If you know anything about Yellow6 (aka Jon Attwood), you know that he releases music at an insanely prolific rate. In the past seven years, he's put out roughly an album a year, plus tracks on compilations, EPs, and singles. He also puts out a huge amount of work on CDR, including yearly Merry Xmas discs that have sometimes contained well over an hour of new music. To date, my favorite music of his is still the long tracks he did for the Catherine Whiskey EP on the Jonathon Whiskey label, but his 3CD set The Beautiful Season Has Past also compiled a huge amount of great tracks with very little filler. In terms of his recent discography, his last album Melt Inside felt like a massive letdown to me. It was the first time that he'd really tried to incorporate vocals (from singer Ally Todd) into his tracks, and the result sounded like a big stumble, either because of Todd's over-dramatic singing style and sometimes cringe-worthy lyrics, or simply because it was such a break from his usual sound. If his last album was a big step into a different direction, then Painted Sky finds him completely back into his element, with guitar-based tracks that largely drift in the ether. The album opens with "I Know I Shouldn't (But I Do)" and "I Loved You More Before I Knew You Loved Me," and the two tracks are essentially slight variations on the same sun-soaked theme. With desert-dry guitars, they both sound like plays on spaghetti western soundtracks, with the former mixing in some soft synth pads and distorted electric guitar while the latter is even more haunting and sparse with overlapping wails of guitar drone underneath the undulating melodies. On "Common," the album changes up as Attwood introduces some programmed beats, and the song progresses pretty nicely over the course of almost eight minutes, with a couple slight rises and falls that build just enough tension to keep things interesting. When he moves away from the guitar as a focal instrument, the results aren't quite as pleasing. The piano-driven "Nye 2" takes some simple melodies and buries them in effects, seemingly trying to tug something more interesting out of them, while the spaced-out "Realisation" drifts on hazy synths and some sparse guitar notes for almost six minutes without changing up much. The release doesn't shake out of that more drifting vastness until the latter half of "Eighteen Days," where some distant drums move things forward nicely, and then the closing two songs of the release bring mixed programmed beats back for more of a backbone. With ten songs running an hour in length, Painted Sky contains both a hand-full of great tracks as well as several that simply don't add much to the album. That said, Painted Sky is a solid return to form that's as solid as anything he's done since Lake:Desert. Ambient guitar-heads rejoice. ALMOST COOL Leicester-based Jon Attwood is the first UK artist to release on Resonant, but he's certainly been around the block once or twice during his nigh-on decade-long career, contributing to the catalogues of labels like Darla, Awkward Silence and Ochre along the way. This latest album from Attwod was recorded over a two year period, yet finds him stripping away his previous sound in favour of a more pared-down aesthetic, focussing on his lonesome guitar intonations and the spaces they occupy. This is post-rock but not necessarily a familiar strain, with Attwood often taking more of an ambient soundscaper's approach to composition rather than the conventional route. This isn't always the case however, 'I Know I Shouldn't (But I Do) sounds very much informed by Earth's Hex; or Printing In The Infernal Method and is none the worse off for it. Deeper into the album the echo chamber drums of 'Eighteen Days' sound vast and forlorn, perfectly framing Attwood's tremulous waves of delay-soaked guitar. BOOMKAT 'Painted Sky' echoes the sound which identifies many releases on Resonant, a small label that has come to represent spacious organic acoustic pieces. Calm endless tracts of manipulated sound and recordings drift from one shore to the next, always with the frayed edges left in, the scratch of guitars, the static caught on the microphones, all this adds to the landscapes evoked by the sigh of melancholy arrangements devoid of human presence. Yellow6 (Jon Attwood) draws close to label mates Library Tapes, but 'Painted Sky' carries a fuller structure, finding itself without the disjointed uncomfortable snippets of sound and deluge of crackles and hisses. The tracks here consist of bare guitar, pushed through slight distortions, backed by simple unassuming percussion and a subtle static whirr of muted but sharp electric guitar in breakdown. Tracks are distinguishable in the way the sounds are captured, the way the mic hears the guitar or the drums. The different elements float in and out of the mix, a solitary note picked out grows into a chord, and a track blooms quietly like plants in stop frame, from the barest of organic beginnings. ANGRYAPE
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