Eyvind Kang - The Yelm Sessions (2007)

After listening to the first few tracks of Eyvind Kang's The Yelm Sessions, fans of his, especially of his previous album Athlantis, might be thinking, "Aw man, Eyvind's gone all soft on us." The pastel-colored title track, The Yelm Sessions, and the pop-sounding Latin dance Enter the Garden are lovely, but are a far cry from the dark power characteristic of his most exciting work. The fourth track, though, Fire in Wind, for orchestra, keyboards, guitar, electric bass, and percussion, inhabits the fearsome soundworld of Kang's more unsettling work, and most of the remaining pieces lead the listener through a number of dark, disturbing places. Locus Iste, Sulpicia Variation, and Hawk's Prairie are chillingly ominous; they conjure up images of immense power, and not a very nice power. Like much of Kang's best work, they evoke a distant past that's been drawn very spookily into the present moment, creating a sense of imminent danger. Several of the pieces, such as Mistress Mine, a Renaissance-sounding song based on Shakespeare, and Hiemarmene, call on the past with less overt threat, but still with some measure of mysterious twistedness. Epoché for Strings, the final track, is based on a work of J.S. Bach and is curiously inert, following the vitality of much of the rest of the album. The amazingly versatile Kang performs on most of the tracks, playing violin, viola, cello, guitars, keyboard, bass, sitar, recorder, and manipulating the electronics. The various orchestras, conductors, singers, and instrumentalists who perform on the album are too numerous to list here, but they all contribute to Kang's vision with passion and commitment. The many engineers involved deserve substantial credit for the album's atmospheric and evocative sound quality.