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I knew nothing about Yvat before I heard this CD. Indeed, I didn't know whether Yvat was a band, a man, woman, or beast, but apparently he's a he who lives in Bucharest, where he manages his own sound design company called, appropriately enough, Media Sound Design.
It transpires Yvat has also released a number of CDs and DVDs according to his website – some of them in rather interesting looking packaging by the looks of it. Whether they're all up to the quality of this one I can only guess, but this five track EP/min album is, as his label's website describes it, a "combination of chopped up samples, solid productions, deranged synths and broken beats". It's also – as the label boldly states – "a wonderful piece of electronica".
The opening track Vtol takes a minute or so to warm up, but, when the sinewy synth sounds call in to say hello to those choppy beats, it all makes sense. Trawl opens with a repetitive bass sequence and although it doesn't really go anywhere it's perfectly nice where it is. Eren, meanwhile, is another number that takes a while to get going, but your patience is rewarded when some pretty yet heartfelt melodies pop up in a Caribbean kettle drum kinda way over some pulsing percussive noises. Unveil opens as if it's a continuation of the same track, with the melody stripped away, and at the risk of repeating myself it's another that takes a while to get going. It's almost as if Yvat sets up his equipment and just starts playing to see where it goes and then treats us to the results. It could be argued that we could do without these extended, less interesting intros, but when these tracks reach their respective moments of beauty it feels all the more rewarding for the wait. Nowhere is this more evident than on the rather gorgeous final track, Nand, which is probably the highlight of the set.
Whether the MySpace generation who merely listen to the opening bars of a song before moving onto the next page will have the patience to hear these tracks in their entirety is a matter of conjecture of course, but they'll be the one's missing out.
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