MYSTIFIED: Yenisei Crossing (2020)

“One needs a good open mind on a modern art livened up by a fusion between Post-Punk and a psychedelic industrial music feed by an organic ambient vision”

1 Luszg 3:08

2 Xtwz6 5:28

3 Oecv4 2:50

4 Dze3w 1:46

5 Fhovv 4:09

6 Oww98 4:42

7 Wixwg 3:45

8 L31mf 3:58

9 P64ii 2:27

10 Krr0e 6:50

11 Ti7n8 1:47

12 S46p5 2:22

13 Ex0gy 5:27

14 Ex98r 4:20

15 Eu9on 1:59

16 Emdsu 3:16

17 Bszo9 3:29

Spotted Peccary Music | SPM-3402

(CD/DDL 61:49) (V.F.)

(Organic Ambient Shamanic Tribal)

What do I have to hear? I have come a long way since 2001, since my first columns in a local newspaper. But it still happens to me, less and less, to face albums where my ears bleed or that I feel them trying to escape my Sennheiser. Like this YENESEI CROSSING! I remember having my difficulties when I reviewed Morning City a little over 3 years ago. You had to work on your hearing to find musical bits, but there were some. It's the same with this album where the sound adventurer Thomas Park, alias Mystified presents one of the most imposing collections of life samples stolen around different points of this long Siberian river. These samples have been collected and processed by computer in order to have the best atmospheric result to surround the different forms of rhythms that make YENESEI CROSSING vibrate. Let me underline it right away, this is not the kind of meditative album or ambiences music that serves to decorate the background sound of an evening with friends. It's rather a hard album which requires a good opening on contemporary art animated by a fusion of Post-Punk and psychedelic industrial music which is surrounded by an ambient organic vision. In short, it's all and nothing!

Luszg offers a pulsating rhythm in the form of rubber which hides behind a mass of samplings sculpted in multiple jerks. P64ii gives us the same pace, but in a smoother view. Xtwz6 is like a big industrial manhole that swallows up everything that goes around it. Result? Its rhythm is pulsating and slow without any harmonic vision. And I could continue throughout this album which offers similar structures but in different degrees of intensity and creativity. Like this Oecv4 and its multiple layers of percussions which drum anything in an organic sound fauna. This rhythmic heart which beats its life arrhythmically is worth its idea. Do we want more? And no, your sound system is not disturbed since openings interspersed with a silent fraction of a second pop out at any moment. Like in the too short Dze3w which offered a good structure of rhythm which is however collected by Fhovv. The rhythm is regular like a ticking clock, but its Teutonic coldness wins it over our expectations. This rhythm drummed like a child drumming on his drum around his mother also appears in Oww98 which is haloed with circular wiishh. It still remains in the area that is difficult to justify, except for the post-punk and Indie communities who cry to the genius here. There is nothing wrong with the slow movement of Wixwg's static mass. In contrast, there is venom in L31mf's Tibetan industrial rock that burns into a misshapen mass pounded by an approach of hypnotic counter. In a register of scary movie, Krr0e does quite an impact! The vision of atmospheric discord which surrounds this rhythm in 3 phases is unbearable at the level of tension. There is an imbalance between the rhythm structure and its atmospheres, we even hear gasps lost in the effort, which makes this track quite effective.

These ambiences and this stifling rhythm follow the short road of Ti7n8. The concept is also the same on S46p5 and the calibration of its long riffs of noises cut by portions of jerks in a big thundering industrial rock. Do I hear ghostly howls? Everything can be possible inside this mass of samples glued together according to the vision of a computer. So, it's in a cybernetic vision that a title like Ex0gy steals a bit of our desire for tranquility for an industrial Punk where the hoarse voice of a cybernetic singer fits very well to this mass which moves like these spontaneous aerial movements of the old Punk. Exorcise before trying!😉With the head moving forward to back, turning to offer hair to the four winds, Ex98r presents a barbaric Heavy Rock that will make Ozzy blush! There is liveliness in this title whose words chewed up in a texture of noises are the equivalent of a big burp by a filthy beast. Eu9on tries to resurrect Ex98r, but it's still just a pale copy. Emdsu finally offers a little respite with this rhythm structure that sucks everything, like a big suction cup, making the effect of a rubber heart that pumps the organic life of this penultimate track of this album that refuses to die with the pulsating industrial rhythm of Bszo9 that I would clearly see next to Krr0e. Sometimes, I have the feeling of hearing a beehive collapsed in a tornado.

Impressions! Have the impression of! It's around these two exclamations that YENESEI CROSSING lives on. The only pleasure I had to review this Mystified album is to have found some text to put around these 17 structures. Rather, I reviewed it out of respect for the Spotted Peccary Music gang. And the more I went from one title to another, the more I found something particular where each structure was justified by the collage proposed by Thomas Park on these rhythms which made me feel like kaleidoscopic whirlpools. Since this musical genre is not particularly in my area of expertise, I reserve the right not to rate this album. But yes, I got through its 62 minutes. And yes also, I did not listen to music afterwards. Just the next day!

Sylvain Lupari (September 15th, 2020)

SynthSequences.com

Available at Spotted Peccary Music