Review: Yawning Balch ‘Volume Four’
In all honesty, improvisational music can be somewhat difficult to review. I’m fully convinced that supergroup/revival group/meditation collective Yawning Balch are – in fact – releasing various cuts and edits of one single, spiraling, instrumental song whose beginning and completion are difficult to ascertain as it drifts through the ether.
The song swirls high above the sun-parched deserts of Southern California in luminous, non-corporeal form, waiting to be harnessed by Bob Balch and Mario Lalli in the studio. Indeed, Yawning Balch is itself a new iteration of Yawning Man, so it fits that their work continues going forward in a way of sonic uncertainty, traversing an ethereal path up from the runway without necessarily looking for the landing strip.
pushing through the atmosphere at a steady and measured pace of melody and free-form energy…
Pyramid Of Djoser, at over twenty-two minutes in length, is a swirling melodic dance of Balch and Gary Arce’s kaleidoscopic guitars coupled with Lalli’s consistently propulsive bass. Better known as a guitar player with Across The River and Fatso Jetson under his belt, his deft finger style is energetic, commanding and ever-flowing. It maintains a consistent convalescent ascent to a higher plane, only breaking from its rhythmic pattern in a brief middle segment.
Water Ritual finds itself on slightly calmer seas but maintains the driving psychic energy and pedalboard dancing of the previous track. As mentioned before, this is quite literally one song broken into segues, so a proper grammatical descriptor can be a bit challenging. Methinks it might be in the band’s favor to release all volumes into one gleaming combined effort of soaring desert rock splendor. In any case, Volume Four continues pushing through the atmosphere at a steady and measured pace of melody and free-form energy.
Label: Heavy Psych Sounds
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Rob Walsh
