ALBUM REVIEW: The Sublime – YERÛŠELEM
Often, we look to music to help convey our emotional and mental states. Many times, it is a journey to discover something important but ultimately intangible in the movements of the chords and the shifts in tempo that can’t be described. Two piece YERÛŠELEM present their debut album The Sublime, an experiment in sound. Taking influence from industrial and psychedelics to neo-gothic and electronica, this album is breaking the parameters of genre and expectation. So the question is, what is The Sublime?
Far away crashes, as a tumbling unknown cascades down deep tunnels, opens our first track: The Sublime‘s titular offering. We are then greeted square in the face with the snapping, tempered high hat, melodic, twisting guitar melody, all encased in a booming swell of low, brooding keys. A voice, indistinct, exotic and enticing draws you into the warm embrace of this swaying, hypnotic opener.
Less calm, and more menacingly unusual, Autoimmunity is a focused energy, consumed by long shrieks of guitar over achingly well-paced percussion. Layers of sound build over and over, and although there’s never a moment where things get really crazy, the ache for something more to appear is exactly what leads us into third track Eternal. More stargazer soundscapes cross into the darker side of electronica, and the motifs that cross from one song to another are becoming more apparent. It stretches a little long for those looking for more than just an interesting dynamic of vocals and arrangement of the ambience, but fits perfectly into what YERÛŠELEM are trying to capture. This isn’t so much music for the complexity of music, but the complexity of the human mind. Our abrupt ending here gently pushes on into what might be the best track on this record, Sound Over Matter. It’s quiet ripple from one note to another creates a moment that lingers in the air, thick and rich, without ever holding much structure. A two-minute thing of pure beauty.
Joyless is much the same in it’s stripped back introduction, but again we’re greeted by that truly sinister metallic edge that YERÛŠELEM manage so well. This contrast is an absolute selling point for this two piece; the balance of dark and light, and the continual overlap without ever relying on vocals and lyrics to steer your emotional response is a strong foundation for their writing. When Joyless pushes through its unearthly beginnings, it’s a mass of odd time signatures, jarring pull between the thudding bassy rhythm guitars and the inflamed, piercing lead. With so many tiny increments to follow, you’ll be in mental knots trying to hold onto a consistent line. Haunting and disconcerting, it’s melancholy choral moaning adds an itch of human discomfort to this wonderfully disturbing track.
Pushing on with the industrial feel, Triiunity and Babal keep pulling at distorted, disjointed strings as the drum snaps, true and merciless. Nothing is ever fast on this record – it doesn’t need to be. The sense of groove and uncomfortable movement comes from it’s pacing, as the vast depth of sounds, the tones and inching uneasiness is all intentionally so, creating a real atmosphere. This is experimental music that won’t gel with some, The Sublime is very much an album that requires the listener to open their minds to the imagery the music can conjure. Those who are looking for more hard driven motions won’t find that here – rather, this is something of a soundtrack into your own mind, an album to find something in yourself as you peer into each avenue YERÛŠELEM take you down.
Reverso is as tuneful as you’ll get on this album, with plenty of synthetic sounds overlaid to balance the tinkering guitars. The mix is impressive, as no one movement overpowers the other, and everything just about fits, but only just enough to continue the complete feeling of disorientation. The fusion of organic and synthetic sounds creates a nice resonance, it feels like an odd dream sequence. As Sound Over Matter was a moment of clarity, so too is closing number, Textures Of Silence. Much more sombre than its paired track, this lament is a perfect way to encompass the strange and wonderful emotions of The Sublime, capturing the ghosts of all that came before.
As an album that strives for meaning in the spaces seldom explored, what The Sublime captures is something personal to each listener. A duo not for all, the soundscapes YERÛŠELEM are both dark and beautiful, acoustic and industrial. All in all, The Sublime encapsulates the unspoken ideas we all contend with, an interlinking, disjointed, passionate and stoic combination of gorgeous composition.
Rating: 8/10
The Sublime is out on the 8th of February via Debemur Morti Prodctions.
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