Yasai by Yasai
Yasai (self released). Scarcely a dry eye in the gallery when this popped up through the speakers I can tell you. Catching our ear and attention via an unsolicited email – Yasai are a boy / girl duo hailing from Staffordshire who sight their collective influences as Velvet Underground, JMC, Low and the Raveonettes bands all of whom on one hand they manage to avoid explicitly sounding like and yet on the other strangely embrace and indeed draw from within their faintly worked murmuring melancholic craft. Admittedly somewhat smitten here by the undeniable allure of their sparse artistry which aside being indelibly traced with an aching affection also finds itself bleached and blistered by an emotionally crushed persona that’s cradled and framed by a yearning faded glamour with the opening salvo ‘cold’ in particular on first hearing much recalling Galaxie 500 though on repeat listens sounding like some distressed spectral seduction woven by an at the top of their game Damon and Naomi. Elsewhere the ghost like psych noir of ‘open’ mooches ominously as though having you imagine a darkly beset Mamas and Papas under the guiding hand of Dead Can Dance swapping Californian sun sets for harrowing storm cloud overcasts with the corkscrewing pensively wound riff snake winds unexpectedly blossoming at the 2 minute mark to rupture gorgeously amid an arresting haze of sun bursting hymnal folk halos. All said it’s the howling clamour of the parting ‘debt’ that cuts the deepest with Buckley, Walker and Hardin presiding over the softly stirred and stilled stately solace enrapt in a subtly seducing parched primitive psyche folk shimmer that purrs to the frail desperation of the Virgin Passages and the minimalist majesty of an early career Her Name is Calla while simultaneously sporting the occasional nod to the Ecstatic Peace imprints more wayward and flawed souls and here we are thinking MV + EE.
Mark Barton (RIP), Losing Today, 21/9/2011.
