Bored of predictable, tasteless, prefabricated products of the music industry? You are one of those people who swear that the music was last time alive in the 70s? Well, this is definitively for you!! The Witch (Yoko) is back ( 😆 ) and she’s diving into the wildness of experimental avant-gardism along with Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth. Some will consider this the highest manifestation of Art Rock, some will call it a Mother’s play with her progenies, or this might be just a simple session of couple and/or group therapy revealed in public now – considering this is the first Moore and Gordon’s musical release together since announcing their separation after 27 years of marriage. Any of this actually do not really matter, Yoko was always a case of love or hate, Sonic Youth probably as well, everybody have a different and pregnant opinion about all of them and that impression will definitively not gonna change after listening “Yokokimthurston”.
The record starts with “I Missed You Listening”, an almost 10 minute of “100% Yoko” and Yoko throw her everything in from baby-cute cooing through demon-possessed laughter through hysterical yelling to orgasmic ecstasy and mystic whispers and it’s also a clear and loud statement of who’s the leader, the driving force of this project. This is not “Double Fantasy”, but more like Diamanda Galás’ “The Litanies of Satan”.
Six tracks, average 10 minutes each, kind of both exhaustive and hermetic, obscurely ritualistic, a sprawling psychedelic rollercoaster of hide and seek, eventually meaningless for any outsider, but spiritual and intimate for its participants and a handful of initiates.
This is a manifest in a world dominated of products and superficiality, plastic, counterfeit media-friendly fill-up “music” surrogates, and scary depths of human emptiness. Still, there is no such thing as “right or wrong”, and while people are comfortable consuming easy digestible, no attention needed “music”, eventually exclusively beats to shake their money makers, it’s just alright as it’s alright if almost 80 years old Yoko step up on the stage and “sings” like she just have the most disturbing orgasm of her life. Experimentation in music must be applauded and supported, especially in today’s monochromatic musical industry ruled exclusively by boring patterns and loops, fake stars and all over-again recycled cliches.
Although, “Yokokimthurston” it’s not so revolutionary, “edge cutter”, or fresh as some youngsters or less involved listeners might consider it, and it’s more a protest and statement. It’s good to know that Gordon and Moore still are capable professionally to work together and they are willing to create and explore, so, there might still be a chance for further Sonic Youth releases. Yoko have nothing to prove to anybody, so, “Yokokimthurston” it’s just an experience, one more page in a book full of colorful pages. This is not the “proper background noise” you are used to for your iPod? Well, accessibility it’s not a criteria when it comes down to creativity and art.
On the other hand, it’s always much comfortable to be ignorant and to be just like anybody else.
Tracklist:
01 – I Missed You Listening
02 – Running The Risk
03 – I Never Told You, Did I
04 – Mirror Mirror
05 – Let’s Get There
06 – Early In The Morning
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIxKrgw-xgc&w=545&h=307]
Great review, BV!
I was sure you will like Ono’s new work!
hard not to give her credit for all her work all these years… so somehow it is hard to take John out of the Yoko equation… but seem harder now to take Yoko out of John’s.
Here is her 1967 project which is just happening on the Internet
http://www.smilesfilm.com/about/original-script-yoko-ono or for the iphone
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/id536220280?mt=8&src=af&affId=2064962&ign-mpt=uo%3D6
The “film age” it’s already gone, now we’re fucked up and bored of everything, “age of idiots”, I guess, people who own smarter phones as they are…. Pretty sad? Rather predictable and only getting worster and worst!
Ono? Not really a fan although.
People smiling? Really? I did not noticed anybody lately – I mean in the last 4-5 years…
sorry to hear that man – thought you got over being depressed… Probably you’d expect nature to ‘encourage’ us to smile… it never did it never does!… maybe age has something to do with it… once you’ve seen too much it is hard to smile and easier to argue the movie that is called Life… is a repeat! Who know maybe there’s hope in waiting for the Martians or for the Bunny outta space to come.. they might obliterate the planet or give us the lives and smiles we don’t have!…
It’s not depression my friend, it’s life and reality. Quite strangely, more and more I have the certitude that people in West not even now realize in what kind of deep shit this whole goddamn species are and what even more shittier times are coming. And not for the next generation, but it’s a matter of month, at best a couple of years.
The very next question: when the war on Iran will start and what it will actually bring on us? Give piss a shit – just to maintain the hippie vibe and keep John and Yoko’s spirit alive….
well man you should smile.. cos we’re old enough not to be taken to war! .. we’re gonna stay home and bang all the chicks that the boyfriends left – we will be in position to finally prove that the older man are better in bed and in everything – that is the only worry you should have! just kidding… told you should emigrate at least there’s one place or two where one can hide!
Emigrate – eventually, to another planet because I’m kind of done here…. 😆
Bang? Bang then! Bang your head!! 😆
http://soundcloud.com/byzantatsunset/bang-ur-head-take-one
(and now this: http://www.indabamusic.com/sessions/panksament/899955 )
P.S. Said smiling, don’t you? What about laugh? 🙂 I think we “have to laugh”. And I mentioned war, isn’t it? You said something about banging “all the chicks”, don’t you? And finally, what about Amsterdam as destination? Well…..
“We were very little during the war. When the sirens started our mum would take us down into the basement. We didn’t have any helmets so we used frying pans to cover our heads. We all looked so funny. And we had fun there.”
I (Anna Holligan, BBC News) ask, when she looks back at her life in Amsterdam, was there more laughter or tears?
The twins say their memoirs have changed attitudes; they used to get abuse, now they get respect
“Oh laughter, definitely laughter. You have to laugh even if you are sad because it is your life and you can’t change it, but it is always better if you are smiling.”
(The whole story here:) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19727455
Man, life it’s so strange as we look in a different direction, think of something else and the answers are came out of blue from where we do not expect! 😆 😆 😆
As much as I love Sonic Youth, I’ve always hated Yoko’s squeals and bleats, which I find utterly ridiculous. Sadly, this is no exception. I can’t even begin to understand how her “singing” can honestly be called art. I mean, everybody could mewl like that while cutting their toenails…
Gee! 😆
Some of the hippie fans of Yoko would definitively strangler you right now!! 😆
Man, honestly, I’m quite mystified (curious) of the influence and power that woman had and the energy she still have at her respectable grandmother age. As I said, I was not a fan, on the other hand I respect others creativity even if it doesn’t reach me.
I respect creativity too. I just don’t hear anything creative coming out of her mouth, but it might just be me: there’s a lot of things in modern art that I consider to be nothing more than scams. I’m not old-fashioned and there are many modern things I love, but when a painter sells a completely white canvas several thousand dollars, it’s basically a ripoff. And when someone eructs such preposterous meaningless sounds into a microphone, I’m sorry but I’ll think the same, Yoko or not.
Now, if someone wants to explain what exactly they find artistic in Yoko’s approach, I’m willing to listen to their arguments.
I rest my case! Actually, I’m not the most competent advocate of Yoko – and generally for modern art. Even further, the truth is, I hate arts and artists…. 😆 😆 😆
Hah! I guess this would be a question for Richard Walker…
And then again, “Yokokimthurston” – far as I got it – it’s a manifest/protest, and it’s definitively works that way. What’s the artistic value of the album, well, time will tell.