The Breakdown
If ever there was a singer/song-writer laureate being bandied about then surely James Yorkston would be one of the names in the frame. Staggering to think that we’re getting on for a quarter century since ‘Moving Up Country’ swanned over the alt-folk horizon, starting a sequence of unpretentious, profoundly real albums, much loved and much lauded. Yorkston has never been one to rest in the ‘Woozy with cider’ zone though and he’s regularly opened up collaborations to stir his creative flow, as in the stunning jazz/folk, Sarangi rich fusion form a few years back with Suhail Yusef Khan and Jon Thorne. Now comes another coming together, the tantalising music of ‘Yorkston/ Jaycock/ Langendorf’ just released via the We Are Busy Bodies/ Black Sweat Records imprints.
Joining Yorkston in this latest trio are hauntological guitarist David A Jaycock and Swedish multi-instrumentalist/sax player Lina Langendorf. It’s a partnership thick with friendship and sonic camaraderie, born from previous projects, Jaycock as part of trad folk experimenters Big Eyes Family Players who Yorkston first worked with in 2009, and Langendorf from The Second Hand Orchestra, who’ve shared in his last two Domino releases. So ‘Yorkston/ Jaycock/ Langendorf’ is much more than a brief encounter, there’s a history and connection between the threesome which feeds into the music.
The set begins inquisitively with Opening, or Scott, Yorkston teasing notes from his instrument of choice for the album, the nyckelharpa. Rather than the traditional bowing he seems to pluck curiously at Swedish fiddle’s strings before settling into a simplified chime. Langendorf’s fluttering sax lines choreograph around these markers, growing bolder as the song gathers pace, urged on by Jaycock’s more assertive guitar comments. The tune has an enigmatic, almost eastern, Clive Bell edge in its breathy presence.
Havsström grows assertively with more dramatic intent, a stretch of gradually widening sound where the aperture of possibilities slowly opens. The nykelharpa scratches tensely as Jaycock’s synthesiser eerily weeps like a bowed saw before the ripples of music combine. The soundscape is beautifully diaphanous, delicate and hovering, a semi-transparent mist where details suddenly peep through, the strum, the sax parps, the strike of hammered tones.
The sound of physically playing is key to this album’s personality. Sighs and saliva, squeaks and creaks, rattles and bangs give the recording a live, real-time intimacy. Yorkston and Jaycock may have laid down the guide tracks for the pieces but there is no sense that Langendorf merely added into the tunes. In fact you wonder whether her jazz sensibilities encouraged her partners to open out improvisationally within their originally intended structures. ‘Yorkston/ Jaycock/ Langendorf’ never sounds stilted or restricted as the trio sensitively realise that fine balance between the free-form and compositional intent. Listening to the regal Tide allows you to share that thrill as the tune thrums vibrantly with a life of its own. Jaycock’s guitar is foundational here, proposing rhythms, while Langendorf’s sax remains the voice piece and JY’s keyed fiddle, the discoverer of tingling atmospherics. In talking about the album Yorkston has mentioned the Faust influence and that emerges here in the insistent, ticking syncopation which drives the track.
Such kosmische undertones may seep into the trio’s psyche alongside raga, early music drones and La Monte Young slow music but these influences merge and mingle to feed the album’s singularity. When Neither North, nor south eases into a clearer folksy sway, a Nordic Hardanger swirl and the icy swoon of high-toned synths instil the song with mystical hovering quality that’s beyond any campfire cosiness. Similarly Bar elusively ghosts from brief sultry exotica to a gathering of otherworldly sonics. The guitar takes a steely Fahey turn guiding the tune from a lullaby calm to a place of wild-life and forests, where the airborne call of the nyckelharpa and the goosy honk of the sax echo. Langendorf brings a yearning jazz balladry to this place as a post-rock shimmer meets Lea Bertucci woven musical complexity. Intense but also brilliantly descriptive it’s a pivotal twelve minutes on an already impressive collection.
Closing track Lokal dimupplösning till Havs delivers something nearer to what might have been expected from this combo, blending a dark folk drone with the burble of spacey synths, mournful sax and Yorkston’s sinewy fiddle tones. That familiarity doesn’t detract from the tune’s transportational effect though, which has you imagining an aerial view of a vast landscape and relishing the solitude.
‘Yorkston/ Jaycock/ Langendorf’ travels alongside David Jaycock’s folktronic journeys and Yorkston’s live improv with Lau’s Aidan O’Rourke, where he also played the nyckelharpa. There are also hints of the quirky lo-fi electronics of ‘J.Wright Presents’, an excursion which surprised Yorkston followers a couple of years ago. More significantly this music brings with it a rugged far-north vibrance, a Garbarek expansiveness and an Ellen Arkbro resonance which would nestle comfortably alongside Erland Apneseth or Frode Halti’s Hubro releases. So leftfield , yes but any song-seekers shouldn’t feel alienated. This is an album of rare, tender and delicate ways, a thrilling lyrical work which doesn’t need the words.
Get your copy of ‘Yorkston/Jaycock/Langendorf‘ from your local record store or direct from Black Sweat Records HERE or We Are Busy Bodies HERE
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