YAWLING NIGHT SONGS
OUT NOW ON
A SILENT PLACE RECORDS!
Yawling night songs is the first album from the Italian collective called Slumberwood (a bunch of youths interested in music, film and visual arts hailing from the Northern Italy town of Padova) who, after a long apprenticeship in the deepest crannies of the Italian underground, finally took some time to record this lp – now released for public consumption by the mighty A Silent Place label.
Drawing inspiration from artists as diverse as Werner Herzog, Coil, Big Star and This Heat, Slumberwood came to life years ago as a techno-industrial outfit of sort, before morphing into a completely different kind of beast. While still in their early 20’s, band members have under their belt the partecipation to the 2008 Storung electronic festival in Barcelona and one of them (rather improbably) even won the Nurse With Wound’s Two Shaves and a Shine Remix Project competition.
Recorded and produced by Marco Fasolo (mainman of Jennifer Gentle, the Italian psych pop band currently signed to Sub Pop Records) in his own Ectoplasmic Studio, Yawling night songs is the best introduction possible to their technicolor musical micro-cosmos.
Veering from the shimmering krautrock pulse of opener Yahoo to the sheer dementia of second track Galline (Chicken), the album sounds like a bizarre concoction of different styles, all filtered through the surprisingly fresh attitude of the band. Slumberwood are equally at ease with the tranquil pastoral beauty of Thru crop fields and the fake-blues froggy gargarisms of the absurd Il Verme Solitario (Tapeworm) - while the majestic Help me Grandpa just smells of woods and starry nights.
And if it perfectly makes sense that the last song on the album is the Mediterranean dance of The Bride side, the centrepiece of the album probably is their cover/ total re-invention of Mr. Sandman, the Chordettes doo-wop classic here transformed in a deep throbbing, cymbal-crashing and tragically heatfelt song about loneliness and unrequited love of almost alien proportions.
Clocking in a little more than 40 minutes, Yawling night songs is a fascinating compendium of Slumberwood magnificently naïve sound world and a powerful evidence of a small (but quickly growing) musical scene.
Esce a fine marzo per A Silent Place Records "Yawling Night Songs", il primo album della giovanissima formazione padovana Slumberwood.
Prodotto e registrato da Marco Fasolo (mastermind dei Jennifer Gentle), Yawling Night Songs ha già ottenuto ottimi riscontri all'estero, dove è circolato sotto forma di promo, sollevando l'interesse degli addetti ai lavori e guadagnandosi numerosi passaggi radiofonici, incluse emittenti prestigiose come BBC e WFMU in New York.
Nati alla fine del 2006 dalle ceneri di differenti progetti, e cogliendo ispirazione musicale e non da artisti tra loro diversissimi come This Heat, Big Star, Nurse With Wound e Werner Herzog, gli Slumberwood hanno lentamente distillato per il loro esordio una mistura di psichedelia pastorale, elettronica sporca e rumorismo allucinato, capace di coniugare Popol Vuh e Butthole Surfers con un'inconfondibile italianità nella scelta delle melodie.
Temperando le pulsioni più avanguardistiche con un innato gusto pop, Yawling Night Songs passa senza sforzo dal krautrock ipnotico dell'iniziale Yahoo alla pura demenza di Galline, senza dimenticare la quiete campestre di Thru Crop Fields e il finto blues padano de Il Verme Solitario. E se è perfettamente logico che a chiudere l'album sia la danza mediterranea di The Bride Side, gli autentici tour-de-force del disco sono forse Help me Grandpa, tutta notti stellate e licantropiche corse nei boschi, e la cover/ totale reinvenzione di Mr Sandman, in origine gioiello doo-wop delle Chordettes e qui trasformato in un dilatato, disperato incubo lisergico alla David Lynch.
Sospeso da qualche parte tra le nebbie euganee e una favola dei fratelli Grimm, Yawling Night Songs è un canto naif intonato in onore del mistero e della bellezza della vita.
