YUGEN

Compelling chamber rock-style avant-prog, tending towards the serious tones of a Henry Cow or the foreboding atmosphere of a Univers Zero more than the Zappa-esque comedic stylings of a Samla Mammas Manna. With impeccable production, a large array of musicians, and great compositional complexity, this could have ended up being a dry exercise, but it's saved from that by the skilled evocation of mood that's more or less sustained over its entire running time. Weighing in at under 50 minutes, it's the product of a process which values quality over quantity, and sees Yugen going from strength to strength. Elaine Di Falco's vocals are a particular delight.

Enjoying an expansive lineup, Yugen aren't so much a band as they are an avant-prog batallion, delivering a dark, pulsating musical vision which takes on influences ranging from zeuhl to more symphonic-tinged sections of the Italian prog tradition without ever coming across like a nostalgia act, bringing this musical approach right up to date. The album also shows excellent command of atmosphere and mood; whilst some avant-prog acts can risk getting sidetracked into experimentation and intricacy as the be-all and end-all of their work, Yugen's music connects on an emotional level even if you won't follow on a first listen everything they are doing on the technical side of things.

Almost 13 years after its release on January 3, 2012, this album is one of the most compelling documents of live Rock in Opposition. Although there are dozens of live recordings by various bands, what happens in this "Mirrors" is impressive due to the meticulous way in which pieces of extremely high technical complexity were executed to perfection.

Until before this album, I thought that the hundreds of hours it probably took to record these songs in the studio would make it IMPOSSIBLE to play them even in a close version in front of an audience.

How many versions of any Henry Cow song are there out there? I dare say that they can be counted on the fingers of one hand and on this album we have a very powerful "Industry" to the delight and amazement of whoever listens to it. Five stars without a doubt.

4.5 stars. I must admit I've been fascinated with this live recording of late. YUGEN is the project of guitarist Francesco Zago that sprang into life late in 2004. Zago at that time had been writing music for chamber ensembles. It was Marcello Marinone who gave Zago the idea of melding his music with more rock-oriented sounds. And so we get a UNIVERS ZERO-like style from these Italians. Marcello was so convinced of this band's worth that when YUGEN was rejected by a record label specializing in this type of music, he formed the AltrOck label and released it himself!

This was recorded in 2011 at the Rock In Opposition festival in Carmaux, France. Francesco relates that there were skeptics, those who didn't think YUGEN could pull off live what they created in the studio. They rehearsed some 10 to 12 hours before the event but Zago admits they should have put in 100 hours to pull this off perfectly. But they still pulled it off. As the liner notes state "The result is a dizzying cavalcade of turn-on-a-dime rhythms, intriguing harmonics and striking, anthemic melodies that have a habit of drilling down deep into the consciousness of the listener."

A beautiful package this is. The photos and the info from Zago and Sid Smith. There are ten tracks featured here with four coming from their debut, five from what would have been their most recent album at the time "Iridule" from 2010. And a cover of HENRY COW's "Industy", a Tim Hodgkinson composition. Really paying homage to a band who they felt was the motivating force behind the RIO movement of the late seventies. YUGEN feel that they are working within the RIO tradition in spirit and in attitude, even if the original movement has been long gone.

One big difference in "sound" between this live record and their studio versions is that in the studio they would have up to 18 musicians adding various sounds and dynamics to their music, while here it's a more stripped down version. And I clearly like the more stripped down music from this band. This is brilliant! And as Zago relates, orchestrating for the live band of just seven players requires striking a careful balance with regards to what can be eliminated without affecting the integrity of the composition.

So we get about an hour of music here and it really doesn't seem like a live album to me. In fact I still get surprised by the applause after some of these tracks. And how about starting the concert with a one minute track called "On The Brink". Perfect in my opinion because we get these sounds creating suspense as darkness falls. Heaviness comes and goes as it blends into "Brachilogia" where we get this classical display of keyboards and so many intricate sounds. So complex with extreme tempo changes. And yes we are off and running!

It's tough picking a top three. I actually feel the two final tracks are the best, and that's about 22 minutes of music right there. Incredible is the word. "Industry" might be a HENRY COW tune but it reminds me a lot of UNIVERS ZERO. That track and "Overmurmur" are tied for that third spot. The latter is dark, heavy, powerful and complex.

The sound quality could not be better thanks in part to Mike Potter who recorded it, and he's from Orion Studios in Baltimore. I appreciate the photo of the band playing at this event on the back cover. What a show! Bumping this up.

''inventive and dense''

In 2006, Yugen, the band from Italy of RIO/Avant-Prog released the fantastic ''Labirinto D'Acqua'', I spent months listening to this album, dissecting it to finally be able to express myself about what I think of this experience, and I'm I'm glad that day has arrived.

the 14 instrumental songs that together have a duration of 50 minutes flow smoothly, so smoothly that it doesn't seem to be that long, since the album begins with the interlude ''Sévére Réprimande'' at no point have I felt that this album is dragged on, but it only evolved more and more, and after this intriguing start, Yugen attacks with the intense ''Catacresi5'', this song is intense, complex, jazzy, and with a lot of textures in its sound with a lot of breaks in rhythm and with a beautiful piano solo, to be honest, I believe that all the songs on this album stand out and only add to the album, ''Corale Metallurgico'' and ''Brachilogia7'' which, in my opinion, are more intense than many Black Metal albums, how macabre ''Skellotron 003'' is and how beautiful and hopeful ''Quando La Morte Mi Colse Nel Sonno '' is, I feel a lot of feelings in the songs on this album, love, sadness, anger, hate, joy, it's fascinating how the members of Yugen know how to manage this time, with extremely adventurous and dense compositions, full of diversity, full of emotions, with so many things happening, and yet, all these elements are well put together, I love this album, everything about it is very progressive and unique, masterfully executed from beginning to end, ''Labirinto D'Acqua'' is a masterpiece, a sensational diverse experience and easily one of my favorite albums of my life, highly recommended.

While the Rock In Opposition movement in the 70s introduced a new way of turning the rock paradigm completely upside down with totally off-the-wall and over-the-top methods of musical deconstruction, the alienating effect of a splinter of avant-prog chamber rock as introduced by bands like Univers Zero and Henry Cow hasn't exactly trickled out into households across the world but rather created an invitation for an avant-prog playground where the musically addicted can strut their technical prowess and twist and contort their musical inhibitions into bizarre new musical creatures that create dense and mythical beasts that exist in their own universe. Italy's YUGEN got the avant-prog memo that shouts with glee "I AM WEIRD AND HEAR ME NOW!" This Milan based group of mischief seeking musicians fronted by guitarist Francesco Zago really went for it on their debut LABIRINTO D'ACQUA (Labyrinth of Water) and lives up to its enchanting title with intense musical gymnastics performed in a never-ending labyrinth of fluid dynamics. The results is one of the most adventurous little musical journeys that the prog universe has to offer!

Despite the weirdness in full display, YUGEN didn't arise out of a vacuum but took plenty of cues from the greats of the old school prog ilk. While firmly placed in the dissonant and square root of a negative number type of melodic development as experienced by avant-proggers Henry Cow on "Unrest," YUGEN also implement the full band spectrum workout of a full forced chamber rock band in the footsteps of Univers Zero and Art Zoyd. While the guitarist may be the main man of the group, guitars are not the primary focus but rather the main vibe is a healthy parade of convoluted piano, mellotron and moog dynamics accompanied by a thick heavy bass with an army of lesser utilized rock instrumentation such as mandolin, flute, vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, violin, cembalo, percussion, shakuhachi, theremin, bass clarinet, tubax (?), sax, bass flute, taragot, regular clarinet and oh yeah, drums! OMG. With a cast membership fo 14 musicians on display, the layered leapfrogging polyrhythms of opposing counterpoints is startling and thrilling simultaneously like watching a slasher flick while riding a multi-looping roller coaster during an electrical storm. This is music for the sonic junkies where every track provides the adequate adrenaline fueled fix.

While the music has the alienation of Art Zoyd on an adventurous day, the tracks actually vary quite a bit with ominous spaced out chamber music such as "Quando La Morte Mi Coise New Sonno" to extreme bombast with Zappa meets Area flavored jazz-flavored workouts in the form of "Catacresi5" all dressed up with a Keith Emerson type of early ELP bombast. While proving they have the chops to beat their chests with the best of the big boy technical wizards, it ultimately boils down to the complex sophistication of the compositions that somehow mystically bend classical and jazz polyrhythms and counterpoints into submission ultimately finding a happy medium. And if you haven't guessed, this is quite the adventurous undertaking. However, despite this massive flow of musical greatness, somehow it all unfolds quite organically however more like some super mystery fungus on another planet far away from Earth's gravitational influence. While avant-prog has been popular in the underground for quite some time now, nobody pulls it off with such grace and technical wizardry as does YUGEN, whose admitted sole purpose was to create musical complexity for its own sake.

While such a lofty claim seems more of a recipe for ego-inflated disaster than a prescription for a sonic ear massage, YUGEN succeeds in achieving an almost undeliverable acrobatic feat of speed and precision cranked out into free flowing yet comprehensively logical tracks that differ from another yet connect like a fine-tuned protocol using blockchain technology. The music is brilliant and dynamic and never allows the listener to be distracted by pointless noodling sessions that meander into infinity but on the contrary keeps the listener's interest peaked as the bizarre and sometimes abnormally odd rhythmic pulses jitter and zigzag like fireworks shooting off angularly in quantum-based vectors of space-time. YUGEN is truly a band that must be experienced to comprehend since no other band can match its feisty avant-prowess since they have not only mastered the ultimate art of fusion but the wizardry of haphazard virtuosic delivery as well. This is my kind of music for those days when only the most weird and complex will do.

4.5 but rounded UP^

After a six year long wait the avant-prog collective YUGEN led by the professor of complexity Francesco Zago, at long last release their anticipated followup to "Iridule" with all those avant-prog gymnastics that have become expected of them. Despite having formed all the way back in 2004 in Milan, Italy, they have been quite conservative and are now only on their fourth album. DEATH BY WATER does an excellent job at not only delivering all that complex progressive rock meets chamber rock yumminess but cements their position as one of the most celebrated outfits in the esoteric realms of what has become known as brutal prog, which is the type of progressive rock that is absolutely unapologetic and relentless in its pursuit to create the most convoluted and bizarre roads to the promised land. If Occam's razor is the principle of reaching a goal by the paths of least resistance, then YUGEN has stubbornly taken the road that bifurcates and twists and turns through unforeseen complications only to arrive at the same conclusion, but a more interesting journey indeed. While this sort of avant-prog can test even the most hardcore prog rock lovers, YUGEN is one of those rare acts that has found the perfect way to balance their intense and demanding musical visions with an underlying swing and avant-groove that keeps the whole thing from collapsing. Therefore this is not complexity for complexity's sake but rather controlled chaos with tension so thick that you could suffocate an entire urban center.

YUGEN waste no time cutting to the chase. Upon the very first millisecond of the opener "Cinically Correct" the sonic frenzy slaps you in the face with each instrument existing in their own universe and somehow coordinating their whereabouts in the musical spectrum as to arrive in bizarre syncopation so interspersed in frenetic time sigs that you will be going WHOAH! There's music where there should be silence and silence where there should be music! And all in strange time sigs that change at super challenging speeds in perfect unison. Pianos, guitars, woodwinds and brass all dance around as if a voodoo ritual that had been crashed by zombies with chainsaws and all the rules had suddenly collapsed in a heap of fight or flight response. My impressions are immediately that this indeed channels the spirit of Zappa but takes it further and enters Mr Bungle territory only in a more disciplined way. I hear all kinds of references to the avant-jazz snippets from the first Mr Bungle album where jazzy chaos swirls around like an imploding gas line and the guitar and glockenspiels reminds me a lot of "Platypus" from the Disco Volante album. Also reminding me of the very same album is the crazy scatted female vocals that pop in randomly when least expected. Perhaps it even reminds me a bit of the first Steve Vai album "Flexible" and YUGEN makes me think that this is what Vai would have sounded like had he continued his virtuosic development more into the realms of avant-prog a la Zappa rather than down the metal shredder path as the virtuosity is stunning.

While much of the album is instrumental and where the magic lies for the most part with one cartoonish musical frolicking session after another with a rotisserie of no less than 17 musicians leapfrogging over each other while playing Twister, there are a few vocal surprises on here as well. While the instrument parts range from chaotically frenetic ("Cinically Correct" being the most explosive), others have more of a spacey and post-rock type of feel such as the title track. The three vocal tracks starkly contrast with the frenetic instrumental pieces and are all quite different from one another. "As It Was" doesn't sound anything like the rest of the album as it takes on a more Maudlin Of The Well type of spacey post-rock and reminds me very much of Toby Driver's projects but not quite reaching his level of otherworldliness. "Der Schnee" is the best of the vocal tracks and delivers a very Nico meets Björk type of feel. Nico in the spacey surreal music department but sounds like an operatic version of Björk as the singer can venture into post-punk mode and then leap to high diva notes that could shatter glass. The final closer "A House" is a surprisingly uneventful folk song that only lasts over a minute but seems totally out of place.

Overall YUGEN have released yet another top notch assemblage of complex art rock that only THEY could unleash with the precision timed complexity that weaves the web of progressiveness that purple proggy dreams are made of! The instrumental pieces on this one are magnificent and vary greatly with some providing staccato attacks, some over the top metal leaning distortionfests and others simply using melancholy and atmospheric manipulation to create startling emotional contrasts. If not for the vocal tracks i would find this to be a masterpiece of extreme experimental music but unfortunately two of the vocal tracks just don't work for me. As stated "As It Was" brings Toby Driver's project too much to mind and the closer just sounds like a rather mediocre indie folk song with nothing much to add. I can understand the intent of adding these as i'm sure they are meant to pacify the riled listener after such brutal prog attacks on the senses and i'm not even against the idea of such. I simply find that YUGEN doesn't come close to pulling off these avant-ballads in an original way like they have with their choppier outstanding instrumental assaults. Still though, despite these quips, this is one of my absolute favorite prog releases of 2016. For the most part, uncompromising prog that still manages to keep an inner groove that keeps it all intact. Bravissimo!

4.5 rounded down

Magnificent! There, I wrote It. That's the only word that capture what is hidden inside one of the best recordings in 2016, and boy, this was a good year for prog. Whenever i hear RIO/Avant Prog I run because most of the time the music is just plain boring and repetitive but, here is just plain beautiful and original rich in sounds, textures and colour and the vocals are one of the fine points here. There is no filler material here, every single one of the songs just feel necessary so if I have to choose a favorite one It would be hard but, if You must know I find the haunting "Der Schnee" a masterpiece. One of the must to purchase this year.

Yugen is an Italian R.I.O/Avant-garde chamber prog collective formed back in 2004 who cite Henry Cow, Univers Zero, Frank Zappa and Thinking Plague among others as initial influences, with a large ensemble of players present on their latest recording `Death by Water', arriving four years after their intense and defining live instrumental recording `Mirrors' in 2012. The current line-up boasts the participation of musicians and singers from a diverse range of (mostly experimental) Italian projects such as Nichelodeon, Not a Good Sign, Ske, Homunculus Res and Gran Turismo Veloce, even French group Loomings and Greek band Ciccada, and it not only contains all the maddening, splintering musical spasms that race about in endless directions of their past works, but a few welcome thoughtful and moody unhurried ruminations to break up the frantic energy.

From the opening seconds, Yugen founder, composer and guitarist Francesco Zago (a complete universe away from the I.Q/Genesis-modelled Night Watch band that he initially played in long ago, although the album is hardly guitar-dominated) and his musical friends tear into the schizophrenic `Clinically Correct', a grinding and playfully malevolent noisy f*ck-snap explosion that sounds like a bomb going off, but it's also deliciously and completely delirious! It's a storm of violent guitar splinters, pounding drums, manic vibraphone, unravelling synth spirals, Zeuhl-ish bass grumbles, creeping sax, twitching female vocal ticks and skittering programming, with every musician offering demented little fills throughout this addictive free- form mental disintegration! The nightmarish and gleefully wicked `As-Matter-Of-Death' somehow lurches into fleeting dirty grooves amongst deranged operatic trills, shadowy gothic piano doom, crashing percussion stabs, wild drum tantrums and a lengthy dark-ambient drone in the second half that all together sounds like the Devil's symphony, but the aggressive senses- shredding female vocal convulsions of `Der Schnee' are likely to engage and enrage in equal measure!

There's also several little interlude pieces that run from 1-2 minutes - `Undermurmur' is a breakdown of infernal tinkling piano, pumping horns and runaway synth ripples, the brief but snarling `Ten Years After' comes the closest to a heavy metal blast, `Studio #9' is loopy and psychedelic jazzy playfulness, sure enough `Drum N' Stick' is a Chapman stick and drum musing over droning soundscapes, and `A House' is a fragile reflective acoustic ballad to close the disc in a gently melancholic manner.

Yet for all the musical multiple-personalities leaping about, it's the pieces that are more focused and slowly build a careful atmosphere that deliver some of the most striking moments, such as `As It Was', a pristine piano and plaintive vocal reflection with a searing Mellotron rise. But perhaps best of all is the sumptuous title track, grand and deeply emotional with Post Rock echoes, a melancholic instrumental of tense acoustic chiming and reaching early Pink Floyd weeping guitar strains over haunting piano and subtle percussion that grows and falls back and forth with restrained power.

The musically discordant, impeccably-performed experimentation of `Death by Water' will ensure it's another divisive release as always for Yugen. If your preferred idea of Italian progressive music only extends to the melodic RPI groups that perform in a theatrical and symphonic manner such as Le Orme, Banco del Mutuo Soccorso and P.F.M, then it might be wise to avoid this disc. But if your brain is wired in a way that responds to the challenging, genre-shattering music of groups from that country like Area, Stormy Six and the works of Claudio Milano, `Death by Water' is waiting to destroy and test your understanding of the term `progressive music', and it's an essential purchase for the R.I.O/Avant crowd and lovers of demanding and ambitious music.

Four stars.

Yugen's return in 2016 is very welcome given the extended gap from their outstanding masterpiece Iridule from 2010. I had worries that Francesco Zago's baby was on permanent hiatus given the large number of side projects he has been working on over the intervening years, Zauss, Not A Good Sign, & Spaltklang. As with previous efforts this is not an album for the faint hearted. Some of the music is extremely angular & dissonant with turn on a dime acrobatics while focusing on instrument interplay rather than individual melodies. There are also many more relaxed serene tracks that more heavily rely on Paolo Botta's keyboards. The balance between this dark heavy angular music and the more traditional Italian keyboard lead beauty can be quit jarring but that is part of the dynamic energy of the album. Extremely good