Week 15 of 52 albums for a year
YĪN YĪN - Mount Matsu
Hello everyone. Another week has flown by and for me it has been filled with the very surprising sounds of YĪN YĪN - Mount Matsu. I can’t remember who suggested it to me, I think it may have been something
recommended last year, but it was in my wishlist on bandcamp so I gave it a shot this week*.
Why is it surprising you ask? Well at first glance when you look at the cover art and hear the opening notes, you think alright, this is psychedelic Sound East Asian or Japanese funk/pop music. And with song names like Takahashi Timing and Tokyo Disko, it’s an easy mistake. But it’s created by a Dutch band. I thought it was a very pleasant surprise.
Right off the rip, the first song, The Year Of The Rabbit sets the tone really nicely. Once the drums kick in, then the bass, you’re really moving with this song. It’s catchy, the riffs and melodies sound lush, and the rhythm section holds everything together nicely.
Takahashi Timing is good, but maybe a little too dancey for me. The start is interesting and has a good sound to it, but around the 2:30 mark it goes into dance territory. I’m sure many, many… many people love this sound. I’m sure if I heard it live, I would also enjoy it now that I’ve heard it a bunch. But it reminds me of the times I’ve heard similar music like this at music festivals. It’s like a vivid flashback to Big Day Out 2005 or something, hearing this style of music hit my back as I’m walking towards the uglier, more rock orientated stage or tent.
Pia Dance was one of those songs that I just always seemed to have stuck in my head this week. It could be because most of the driving I did was around the 10 minute mark so when I’d get out of the car after starting the album, it would keep spinning around in my head. I also think it’s just a really catchy song though. I mean who doesn’t want to sing along with the minimalist chorus? I want to dance with Pia too!
Tam Tam the start of this reminds me of an oriental (and more upbeat) version of a song off the TV show Twin Peaks, perhaps the intro, perhaps something else that escapes me now. It’s a short little instrumental song, it’s not intrusive, and just sits in there nicely.
The Perseverance Of Sano takes things in a different direction entirely, and is a real surf rock song. You can hear the waves and sun in this, smashed by spring reverb and fuzzed out guitars. It’s quite nice, it’s definitely not a clean pop or disco song, but I’m also glad there’s only one track like this on the album.
Of course, the best way to follow up something like that is with a lullaby. Enter Komori Uta. Komori means babysitting and Uta means song, so that’s pretty much what it is. Showing the dynamics of this album beautifully, I love how this song gently caught me after the surf hecticness. It reminds me of a band I saw years ago called Fox and Sui, there’s something innocent and safe about this song.
The Year Of The Tiger is my kind of vibe. Sure, there’s a bit of an intro (almost 2 minutes of a song just shy of 4 minutes is the build up), but when that beat kicks in it fucking slaps! I love this funk sound with the asian styled melodies over the top, I think it works really well and I wish there were more songs like this on the album.
Tokyo Disko is as you’d imagine a disco to sound in Tokyo. I guess? I don’t mind this song but I don’t love it. If you know anything about my music tastes you probably have gathered that disco music generally isn’t my kind of thing, so this one was probably fighting an uphill battle from the start . I like the drum solo break down near the end though.
Shiatsu For Dinner is much calmer and my ears were happy every time it kicked in. It’s another song that I found stuck in my head a lot this week, there’s something really nice about this jam. At the start it’s gentle, non intrusive, lofi pop. There’s a moment when you think it might take off, but nah, it goes back to chill, but with more interesting drum rhythms and dynamics between instruments. I get the sense that they are really playing in this song, having fun as they share a moment that slightly builds by the end.
White Storm eases in from Shiatsu, and it really kicks things up a notch. The sound goes from laid back and relaxed to more dynamic and interesting. There’s lightly fuzzed out guitars, a tight rhythm section, a slow building synth sound, it’s my kind of jam. I think it would be amazing to see this song live, but unfortunately they have never played here in Australia.
Ascending To Matsu’s Height is another gentle song to end the album. Sparse, with plenty of space for the instruments to breathe, it sounds very traditional. Well, not traditional Dutch music, but traditional South East Asian music at least. It’s nice, I like it, but I find it entirely non-memorable because there isn’t a hook or melody.
I’m ok with that.
I like music that’s like this, as it reminds me of what it’s like to travel around South East Asia. You hear music all the time when you’re travelling and while you never hear it again, the vibe of it leaves an impression. I feel like this track manages to catch that vibe.
All in all, I quite enjoyed a lot of this album. Stand out tracks for me were Year of the Rabbit, Year of the Tiger, and Shiatsu for Dinner/White Storm. Sure, there were a couple of tracks I didn’t love, but they weren’t outright horrible.
I’ll give it 3.5 fingers out of 5. The half a finger wants to come up, but realistically it’s not an album I am hanging to put on next week because I’ve got a song that I’m just not done with yet (unlike other weeks).
*I just want to make a note of how nice it has been to be listening to an album that I’ve bought from Bandcamp and not streamed on Spotify. There’s a bunch of reasons I prefer Bandcamp. It’s nice to be supporting the artist, knowing that this week the money went directly to the person who created the music I’m listening to. It’s also nice to actually download the music and artwork so I can listen to it offline. Lastly I like when I’m making links through this post that I’m sending you to the music, not a youtube video and the quagmire of ads and intrusions.
Rant over.
The year so far: