- Some musicians make their instruments weep; Yves Tumor can make samples cry. The American artist has an uncanny ability to express himself with found sounds. Sometimes he embellishes samples, sometimes they stand by themselves—usually, you can't tell exactly what he's doing. It's an alchemy that's hard to understand but easy to enjoy. For his breakout album, Serpent Music, he mixed slushy samples with his own vocals and instruments for a powerful and DIY kind of soul music. On Experiencing The Deposit Of Faith—a free download released days before his deal with Warp was announced—the artist steps into the background and lets his samples speak. They say a lot for him.
Yves Tumor builds entire songs out of chunks of other songs, in the same way Dean Blunt might. "Synecdoche"'s cresting wall of sound seems like a post-rock excerpt. The acoustic guitar strumming of "E. Eternal" has a whiff of John Fahey. The art is in how he handles these samples. On "E. Eternal," it's not just the guitar that's affecting—it's the way it crackles and fades, making each strum of its chord sequence all the more poignant, especially once a chanting choir comes in. It's a study in contrasts, unpretentious and regal all at once.
The LP can, despite its relative simplicity, be emotionally crushing. Yves Tumor crafts loops that gain power from repetition, whether it's in the form of a lilting rap beat ("Anya's Loop") or the cathartic and powerful "Child Of Rage." The best tracks go out on a limb. "Prosperity Awareness," featuring Oxhy, starts out heavy and abrasive, like Yves Tumor's earliest work, before it gives way to a mournful horn and what could be either fireworks or rockets blazing across the sky, an ambiguity that sours what at first feels celebratory.
On the other end of the emotional spectrum, there's "My Nose My Lips Your Head Shape," which features a monologue of a woman discussing with her partner what their baby might look like. Yves Tumor puts a hushed track underneath the speech, but otherwise he treats the vocals with reverence. It's disarmingly close and private. There's a hint of voyeurism to it, but that's another important dimension to Yves Tumor. To listen to his music is to be drawn into a world that's almost uncomfortably personal, whether you're playing one of his records or watching a searing live performance.
The album's emotional weight is all the more impressive considering that Experiencing The Deposit Of Faith was released with no fanfare, on the eve of a major announcement and not even with a consistent file format (four of the files were in WAV format, the other eight in AIFF). It has all the hallmarks of a minor work, but the music couldn't be described as such. Like When Man Fails You, Yves Tumor's first self-released album, Experiencing is both DIY and auspicious, drawing beauty from unexpected places. Even when it's mediated through someone or something else, his voice is too loud to ignore.
Tracklist01. Synecdoche
02. Ayxita, Wake Up feat. Sharmai Areesh
03. E. Eternal
04. My Nose My Lips Your Head Shape
05. Anya's Loop
06. Dry Guillotine
07. AfricaAshes
08. Child Of Rage
09. Prosperity Awareness feat. Oxhy
10. Paigon Hunting
11. Conflict Of Interest
12. Love Is The Law