Detailed Reviews [Yeti Rain - 2007 - "Discarnate"]

Prolusion. "Discarnate" is the first brainchild of YETI RAIN, the US duo of Roger Ebner and William Kopecky. The name of the first musician is unfamiliar to me, whilst Mr. Kopecky is, generally speaking, one of the most active participants of the contemporary prog rock movement, so he has been widely known in corresponding circles already for many years.

Analysis. According to the press kit, the project's music is dark and ambient, otherworldly and visionary all alike, an aural hallucinogenic - the perfect soundtrack for a disturbing dream of inner and outer spaces. Sounds frightful, but quite precisely, perhaps in full accordance with reality, meaning the real state of affairs on the album. What unites the seven instrumentals present is that all are dark in mood, all have a strong cinematic feeling and all are delivered with a pace that ranges usually from, well, simply slow to extremely slow. The difference between the tunes can be traced on both their compositional and structural levels, and also on their emotional angle, which, despite its general belonging to the aforesaid category, is rarely monochromatic. The Veiled Daughters of Sleep and The Prophets' Needle are the most unstructured and, at the same time, darkest pieces. Filled with a painful atmosphere, both are as if designed to depict some of the most nightmarish dimensions of metaphysical world. Each finds the duo being focused on eliciting various (for the most part ghostly and suchlike) effects from their instruments, so the origin of most of the sounds is completely beyond recognition. Nonetheless the final result is very picturesque, bringing to mind the place that the river of Styx flows into, namely Aid - the realm of shadows and restless souls from Homer's "Odyssey". While still not without some so to say schizophrenic elements, Ebon-Ebon-Thalud and Dreaming In the Teeth of Forever are both somewhat more cohesive in construction. The wind synthesizer can in places be clearly heard on the former, as well as fretless bass (whose solos appear to be kind of semi-frozen though), whilst on the latter the only instrument that always sounds just as it should is tanpura, representing something halfway between Sitar and Elute. Doom Ambient (all right reserved:-) would probably be the best stylistic definition for both, especially since their emotional palette includes plenty of various dark colors, such as depressive, sinister, dreadful and more. I am not sure whether Book of Visions and Sea of Endings are both composed or (lacking a better term!) improvised as the others, but these are at least completely structured and are generally transparent. Each of the instruments credited, but especially bass and tanpura, are clearly recognizable almost throughout, the prevalent mood being this time around mournful, in both cases. As for the style of these two, I see it as a sort of doom-ambient take on Indian music. While performed without tanpura, the remaining track, Darklight, is the same story overall and even reveals some eastern-like tunes in places. Finally I must admit I have no idea what a wind drum is about. In any event, I didn't hear any percussive sounds on the recording, besides which there are generally no rhythms in this amorphously eclectic music.

Conclusion. I can't say I am equally enthusiastic about all the tracks here (while being very imaginative, the two described first are certainly not my cup of tea), but overall, Yeti Rain's "Discarnate" is at once the most original and impressive Ambient-related creation I've heard in years. Those fearless enough to meet with true horror, embodied in music, should easily take this bull by the horns, just by using their ears:-). Recommended to the curious.

VM: July 19, 2007