C. Spencer Yeh is a name that everyone might start hearing more of, now. There are a couple reasons to support this statement: one of them having to do with sheer prolific force and the other because he's blazingly listenable and will appeal to a lot of people who like a lot of different music.
Cenotaph
Yeh currently has a full-length available on Thinwrist, a collaboration with Comets on Fire out on Yik Yak, and this double-disc set cataloging unreleased tracks, songs from limited edition CD-Rs, and noise pulled from now out of print cassette releases.
Burning Star Core has been around for nearly ten years and, as such, it's difficult to call Yeh and his music new. Before anybody outside of small, exclusive, and hip circles was talking about Yeh and his approach to electronic music, he was releasing music through his own Drone Disco label and contributing to all manner of compilations and smaller labels. By 2003 or 2004 he had music available on Gameboy Records and Chondritic Sound. He has a huge past and an even more impressive sound. His music is diverse, ranging from harsh noise dysfunction to playful melodic constructions that might owe some recognition to Terry Riley. He fuses both approaches, deconstructs them, rewires them, and rethinks them completely over the course of this two-disc release and has me very excited to hear more full-length material from him.
Despite spanning nearly ten years and despite being constructed from a slew of divergent material, Mes Soldats Stupides '96-'04 presents a coherent vision. Yeh is always occupied with different approaches to his gear and to composition, but his music constantly returns towards the exciting, lo-fi, and tense perspective of dramatic composition. A song like "White Swords in a Black Castle" can be considered nothing but a dramatic experience. The layers of distortion play over the simple, orchestral melody underneath create a dizzying effect, like plummeting to the Earth without fear of death. His techniques are nearly always immersive, enticing instead of repulsive, and content with being both approachable and strange.
This compilation is also compelling because it clearly depicts a development that has gone untouched by almost everyone. Despite the critical praise that The Very Heart of the World has received, Yeh's other work is gone almost completely unrecognized by everyone that can't afford to keep up with every band and every label constantly cycling through the electronic underground. Visiting certain message boards is enough experience for me to know that it would've been near impossible for me to ever find out about Yeh with so many bands and labels releasing literally hundreds of albums every six months. And despite this complication, songs like "Everything 2000" or "The Point of Departure is Not to Return" are golden, in need of more exposure, and worth purchasing the entire release for. When Yeh employs his noise, he emphasizes it, bleeds it of its soul, and chokes it until every last ounce of necessary energy is squeezed out.
His compositions don't ever sound like pure chicanery, there are subtle and beautiful peaks accompanied by low troughs and explosive depressions. Much of the music will sound somewhat familiar because it owes a little bit to those who have gone before: krautrock, ambience, free-jazz, noise, drone, rock 'n roll, avant garde composition, minimalism, it's all here in some mutated and lovingly cared-for form. Yeh has fused it all together, made it his own, and perfected his sound for a long time. And now he's finally showing everyone just how excellently it can all come together.
This album is a necessity for anyone who has some love for strange music and who feels that there isn't so much new under the sun to enjoy. Yeh's not just a new face, he's an erudite listener with about as many faces as a president under fire and each of them are equally intriguing. Such immediately striking music such as this is pretty rare and there's little doubt that Yeh is an imaginative guy with a lot of music left to make; there's almost a decade of wildly contrastive music on two discs here. He might as well be a bottomless pit of sound.
This is going to be in my player for a long time or at least until I can get my hands on an album or two. I feel the beginning of an addiction coming on and, if we're lucky, Burning Star Core will be releasing music as frequently as before, but now everyone will know where and when they'll be available.
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