Yamantaka // Sonic Titan
YT//ST

It's true, it's been a year and a few days - October 1, 2011 - since the release of the first studio album by the Japanese-Canadian sextet (at least, that's what I seem to have gathered) Yamantaka // Sonic Titan. However, the media drumbeat wasn't enough (or wasn't there), as it happens for thousands of small bands, and discovering them is a bit like rummaging among the stones of a river to find some flecks of gold. Well, thanks to a couple of reviews from Pitchfork and Scaruffi, I'm reviewing this "new" album for you.

For once, from the site of this collective, I can easily extract the definition they give of themselves: "a psychedelic noh-wave opera group fusing noise, metal, pop and folk music into a multidisciplinary hyper-orientalist cesspool of 'east' meets 'west' culture clash in giant monochrome paper sets".

Because ultimately, this is what happens in the 31 minutes of the album: it fuses. The cover - which intentionally recalls the style of the anime Akira - is perfect in this sense, a volcanic amalgam in activity, where the best aspects of contemporary progressive rock meet, sounds miraculously balanced between metal and oriental music, shamanic voices (Raccoon Song, A Star Over Pureland) and adolescent ones (Hoshi Neko). The arrangements range from the simplest to the most intricate, but the result is nonetheless valuable: this album has its own soul, and choosing the words to describe it is surprisingly simple.

Certainly, poignant. The ballads are delicate, the Japanese singing and the sound effects (feedback, samples, pure noise) are highly evocative, as Bill Callahan's Apocalypse can be.

Certainly, powerful. The Bachian organ fugue, converted into an infernal progressive of Reverse Crystal, the choir that runs over a percussive carpet for the entire duration of the subsequent Murder of a Spider, the percussion that regulates the adrenaline both in the very delicate Hoshi Neko and in the infernal unfolding of A Star Over Pureland urge to join the macabre dance.

The climax, Crystal Fortress Over a Sea of Trees, blends these two characteristics with great wisdom. What comes to mind is the epicness of some Visual Kei groups from the 80s and 90s (hence the definition of "rock opera"), but with a richness of content far superior. It's not the technique put on a pedestal.

I quote to conclude with a significant anecdote, extracted from a blog belonging to an acquaintance of the collective:

I actually had an opportunity to chat with Ruby before their Jan. 28 show at Toronto’s Garrison. She described to me the background story to ‘Hoshi Neko,’ which was somehow even sweeter than I imagined. It turns out that Hoshi, meaning “star” in Japanese, was the name of her cat back in Montreal. The Japanese phrase Hoshi Neko actually means “Hoshi cat,” however the phrase appearing in the song is actually Hoshi Noe Koe, meaning “voice from a distant star.”

At one point, Hoshi ran away and Ruby made a film based on adventures she imagined he would be having as he escaped into outer space. She had only a single copy of this animation in 16 mm format (the original) that she mailed back to her home address in Montreal as she was traveling. However, the film didn’t arrive when she got home. Further, Ruby was distraught and looked everywhere for her cat with no luck. Without any leads, she had no choice but to focus on an upcoming move to Toronto (where she lives now).

However, the day before she left she walked by a house not so far from her home in Montreal and was happy to find Hoshi sitting outside; it turned out he had been taken in by a new family (perhaps after returning from his voyages in the cosmos!). Of course she wanted to take Hoshi with her, but there wasn’t enough time to work out the issue with the second family, so she contented herself knowing that her cat was safe and seemed happy in a new home. Then, arriving back at her own house, she found the 16 mm film had finally arrived, just before she left the city.

Ruby Kato Attwood - Vocals
Alaska B - Drums, Keys, Programming
John Ancheta - Bass, Acoustic Guitar
Ange Loft - Vocals
Shub Roy - Guitar
Walter Scott - Vocals
Brendan Swanson - Keys