REVIEW: Yokine - Various Artist in Western Australia
I remember my first house. Vaguely, but there are memories. Situated in Yokine, a roof laid like blankets over dark red bricks that formed towering large walls. I was 4 when I moved, so maybe I was just really short by comparison.
“Yokine” is a collaborative album released under the record label “dog park”, run by Perth experimental darling Furchick, and features a collection of experimental musicians around Western Australia. Named after the Noongar word for dog/dingo (and not the suburb as I originally thought), it runs a wide gamut of styles throughout the general “experimental” genre, but nevertheless it still feels compact, which I think speaks to Furchick’s amazing curatorial efforts. I don’t remember much of the first house except the many early mornings I would wake up to sit barely a metre away from television as thick as it was tall, most of the dinners came from a packet or tin and consisted of chicken, noodles and soup, and the abundance of red-back spiders crawling around the backyard. |
The album starts with “Wake Up To Yourself” by Adam Brown with Connor Heart, a song that smashes art music and punk sensibilities into one mess of a song that I adore. Between the pulsating, repetitive piano that tears down the structure of the piece, the creaky sound effects that adds to the unnerving soundscape, the sudden electric guitars, plunky bass and echoey drums seem to just barely keep the punk aesthetic afloat, and the screaming vocals that sound like my inner conscious telling me to get off the couch, it’s definitely an amazing and oddly relatable sound that encaptures the feeling of suburbia.
I remember pre-school somehow. I don't remember the name, but memories of playing hide and seek or superheroes, sleeping on cushions at midday, and dancing to music the carers would play. Shortly after I left, the pre-school was demolished. I don't know what stands there in its place.
Following Brown is Scientia’s “Static Fog”, which feels like the strange but considerate collision between ambient music and house music. The whumps of fuzzy bass at the start are off-putting, but after a while the eponymous static fog hits, and the beauty of the piece shines through. The control Scientia has over the typically chaotic white noise and their ability to mould it into something beautiful is something to behold.
When I was four, I got thrown into Yokine Primary School, and spent the rest of my primary schooling there. Though she wasn’t there long, the highlight teacher-wise was my first music teacher. One cannot forget a blind, tone-deaf music teacher who reeked of cigarettes and was led by a beautiful labrador guide dog.
“Icarus” by Lürgid is a piece that fills me with feelings I don’t understand, which is a strange sensation, but a welcome one. The ever-present nostalgic drum machine that sounds like a haunted GameBoy starts the piece with a dinky, funky groove. As the track continues however, more interesting, modern and unreal sounds come up; dark drones, hollow arpeggios and short electronic screams. The sensation that “Icarus” brings out for me is that childhood dream of being sucked into the GameBoy screen and being transported into a video game world.
That being said, I oddly remember a lot of primary school. Spending most of my lunches playing by a giant tree filled with ladybugs, chewing on lemongrass that grew on the edge of the oval, and drawing on a clipboard under the verandah when it rained.
The dream-like soundscapes continue into cr0nes’ “Location 4”, an electronic exploration of liminality, a world between worlds. The sounds are synthetic and hollow, like a mostly-empty house in Silicon Valley owned by someone with too much money. “Location 4” is very reminiscent of other ambient music made in the past decade, but what it lacks in originality it makes up for with a mastery over the sound and the ever-elusive “feel”, or “vibe”.
My best friend throughout primary school was a boy named Luke, and we’d play Pokemon together and he taught me how to be the boy I wasn’t. I haven’t talked to Luke in a while, we’ve grown up to be different people with wildly different interests. I think he’s in the army. Good for him, I guess.
“mess in slow motion”, the fifth track on the album by Gabbi Fusco, is definitely the outlier of the compilation, and plays more into the tradition of indie pop. The vocals and effects are immaculate, and I really enjoy the use of clipping as an effect. Sadly, as a mix between experimental electronica and Australian indie pop/folk, it just comes off as a badly mixed ballad, which is unfortunate.
When things became too overwhelming or felt a little blue, I would find an empty spot of grass and sit. After a while, if I was lucky, some galah cockatoos would fly down and sit around me. I sometimes wonder if they would still come if I sat down there.
Jumping back into the weird experimental side, “dog swamp” by samarobyn is almost definitely my personal favourite of the bunch, and not just because it’s almost entirely tiny snippets of dog sounds (although it is very enticing). The amazing technical skills of samarobyn are very blatant, which I really enjoy, as I often have a hard time acknowledging just the amount of effort put in on pieces. If I had to describe it in a phrase, it would be “a pointillistic dog walk”: it’s abstract, strange, but still retains natural and organic elements, which is a hard balance, but achieved perfectly.
Once a week after school, I would go with my grandma, my mum and my aunt to Flinders Square, in Yokine. We would get Baker’s Delight, and then I would be driven from there to my piano lessons. I have fond memories of Flinders Square, and despite being technically an adult, I haven’t been back ever since 2014.
Continuing on the theme of natural sounds, Jean-Michel Maujean’s “Wangathaa Papa” (Wangathaa being the identity of the Aboriginal Australians up in the South-East corner of Western Australia, and Papa meaning dingo) is a haunting piece that delves into the psyche of a lonely dingo, howling for anyone, anything, but is only answered by the ghostly echoes of themself. The synthesised drones that move slowly, like the wind, feels like an exploration into the dingo’s emotions.
I remember pre-school somehow. I don't remember the name, but memories of playing hide and seek or superheroes, sleeping on cushions at midday, and dancing to music the carers would play. Shortly after I left, the pre-school was demolished. I don't know what stands there in its place.
Following Brown is Scientia’s “Static Fog”, which feels like the strange but considerate collision between ambient music and house music. The whumps of fuzzy bass at the start are off-putting, but after a while the eponymous static fog hits, and the beauty of the piece shines through. The control Scientia has over the typically chaotic white noise and their ability to mould it into something beautiful is something to behold.
When I was four, I got thrown into Yokine Primary School, and spent the rest of my primary schooling there. Though she wasn’t there long, the highlight teacher-wise was my first music teacher. One cannot forget a blind, tone-deaf music teacher who reeked of cigarettes and was led by a beautiful labrador guide dog.
“Icarus” by Lürgid is a piece that fills me with feelings I don’t understand, which is a strange sensation, but a welcome one. The ever-present nostalgic drum machine that sounds like a haunted GameBoy starts the piece with a dinky, funky groove. As the track continues however, more interesting, modern and unreal sounds come up; dark drones, hollow arpeggios and short electronic screams. The sensation that “Icarus” brings out for me is that childhood dream of being sucked into the GameBoy screen and being transported into a video game world.
That being said, I oddly remember a lot of primary school. Spending most of my lunches playing by a giant tree filled with ladybugs, chewing on lemongrass that grew on the edge of the oval, and drawing on a clipboard under the verandah when it rained.
The dream-like soundscapes continue into cr0nes’ “Location 4”, an electronic exploration of liminality, a world between worlds. The sounds are synthetic and hollow, like a mostly-empty house in Silicon Valley owned by someone with too much money. “Location 4” is very reminiscent of other ambient music made in the past decade, but what it lacks in originality it makes up for with a mastery over the sound and the ever-elusive “feel”, or “vibe”.
My best friend throughout primary school was a boy named Luke, and we’d play Pokemon together and he taught me how to be the boy I wasn’t. I haven’t talked to Luke in a while, we’ve grown up to be different people with wildly different interests. I think he’s in the army. Good for him, I guess.
“mess in slow motion”, the fifth track on the album by Gabbi Fusco, is definitely the outlier of the compilation, and plays more into the tradition of indie pop. The vocals and effects are immaculate, and I really enjoy the use of clipping as an effect. Sadly, as a mix between experimental electronica and Australian indie pop/folk, it just comes off as a badly mixed ballad, which is unfortunate.
When things became too overwhelming or felt a little blue, I would find an empty spot of grass and sit. After a while, if I was lucky, some galah cockatoos would fly down and sit around me. I sometimes wonder if they would still come if I sat down there.
Jumping back into the weird experimental side, “dog swamp” by samarobyn is almost definitely my personal favourite of the bunch, and not just because it’s almost entirely tiny snippets of dog sounds (although it is very enticing). The amazing technical skills of samarobyn are very blatant, which I really enjoy, as I often have a hard time acknowledging just the amount of effort put in on pieces. If I had to describe it in a phrase, it would be “a pointillistic dog walk”: it’s abstract, strange, but still retains natural and organic elements, which is a hard balance, but achieved perfectly.
Once a week after school, I would go with my grandma, my mum and my aunt to Flinders Square, in Yokine. We would get Baker’s Delight, and then I would be driven from there to my piano lessons. I have fond memories of Flinders Square, and despite being technically an adult, I haven’t been back ever since 2014.
Continuing on the theme of natural sounds, Jean-Michel Maujean’s “Wangathaa Papa” (Wangathaa being the identity of the Aboriginal Australians up in the South-East corner of Western Australia, and Papa meaning dingo) is a haunting piece that delves into the psyche of a lonely dingo, howling for anyone, anything, but is only answered by the ghostly echoes of themself. The synthesised drones that move slowly, like the wind, feels like an exploration into the dingo’s emotions.
On the weekends, I would go either to Yokine Reserve or another oval to play football for the Coolbinia Bombers, a team that participated in Auskick. I wasn’t good, but the team was, so I was often kept in the back line, where the ball never went, so I never really touched the ball, but I did like being part of a team.
Ending the compilation album, local experimental trumpeter Dan O’Connor drops a windy and reflective piece by the name of “human person amongst human people”. Oddly, even though the piece is about humans, and prominently features the very human soundbreath, it feels uncanny and almost creepy, like someone is breathing behind you. As the tension slowly grows, the air becomes colder, the hairs on your back perk up… and the piece stops, and you are left alone with your thoughts. A very strong finish to an amazing album.
The house in Yokine was sadly a rental, so my parents, my old cat by the name of Rega, and I had to eventually leave. I have fond, but sparse memories of my time in Yokine. Most of them involve the constant red-backs in the toilet. Maybe it was good that we moved.
Overall, “Yokine” by various artists from Western Australia is an experimental journey through the multiple perspectives of the land upon which we create, perform and live. Again, Furchick’s curatorial skills is nothing to scoff at: each piece is unique, interesting and entertaining in it’s on right and in the context of the album. If you want to have a taste of the wildly varied West Australian experimental scene, I would highly recommend this album!
(Album and image credit: Eduardo Cossio)
Ending the compilation album, local experimental trumpeter Dan O’Connor drops a windy and reflective piece by the name of “human person amongst human people”. Oddly, even though the piece is about humans, and prominently features the very human soundbreath, it feels uncanny and almost creepy, like someone is breathing behind you. As the tension slowly grows, the air becomes colder, the hairs on your back perk up… and the piece stops, and you are left alone with your thoughts. A very strong finish to an amazing album.
The house in Yokine was sadly a rental, so my parents, my old cat by the name of Rega, and I had to eventually leave. I have fond, but sparse memories of my time in Yokine. Most of them involve the constant red-backs in the toilet. Maybe it was good that we moved.
Overall, “Yokine” by various artists from Western Australia is an experimental journey through the multiple perspectives of the land upon which we create, perform and live. Again, Furchick’s curatorial skills is nothing to scoff at: each piece is unique, interesting and entertaining in it’s on right and in the context of the album. If you want to have a taste of the wildly varied West Australian experimental scene, I would highly recommend this album!
(Album and image credit: Eduardo Cossio)