THINGS TO COME...

YETI were a quartet from Texas who really took me by surprise. I was given a nondescript-looking two song demo CD to review back in 1999, and I was floored the moment I put it on. Soon thereafter, their debut album, Things to Come, was released, and it did not disappoint. The two songs from the demo were included in slightly (but not much) cleaner versions, and they were joined by two more equally impressive tracks. In the past few months, I have been revisiting this CD, and it sounds as good now as it did then, long after the novelty has worn off. And the more I listen to it, the more convinced I am that it brilliantly succeeds at everything it attempts; and since I love the kind of thing they attempted, I'm gonna give it five stars.

YETI are an all-instrumental group of guitar, organ, bass, and drums, and if I had to sum them up in one sentence, I'd say that this is a group that takes the spirit of Magma's classic song "De Futura" as a starting point, and expands out in all directions from there. Long, trudging, bass-heavy epics with a strong rhythmic undercurrent, over which guitar and organ wring out the coolest possible sounds you can imagine. Heavily phased wah-wah guitar, haunted Mellotron, screeching Lowery organ (like the Soft Machine), distorted bass riffs, stop-on-a-dime ensemble twists, it's all here and more. Each of the four tracks offer a different angle on this approach, and all are equally compelling, creative, and create a lasting impression (13 years and counting for yours truly).

"Two Fingers", the nine-minute opener, starts things off on a relatively brisk and funky note, never staying in one place too long as it develops several themes and switches fluidly between them. "Interstellar Biplane" (10 min) follows with some rather frantic and fast-paced ensemble playing before settling into a strange slow section interrupted every few measures by a burst of rhythm, followed by yet another groovy Zeuhl-ish bass line. "Go Like This" (10 min) starts in a quick tempo'd fashion but soon moves into a real spooky ominous section colored by a thick layer of dark wah-wah chords on the guitar. This section builds slowly over most of the piece's duration. One might figure that this is the "doom" number on the album, until the final track "Est Mort", hits the speakers. Approaching 17 minutes in length, this is a horribly great river of dark sludge. Beginning with a theme introduced on guitar, similar to the main guitar theme of Magma's aforementioned "De Futura", the songs soon collapses into a slowly moving tornado of organ and guitar noise, threatening to dissolve into chaos, but always moving forward ever so slowly. The band eventually rescues itself from this pit, only to throw itself into another one. This is the track most likely to melt your brain if the other three haven't already.

Perfectly executed album featuring elements of several progressive music styles that have always been favorites of mine - adjectives like "dark", "intense", "groovy", "daring", and "noisy" come to mind. If you love Magma's heavier works like "De Futura", the anarchic noise of the early Soft Machine, and music that doesn't mind going over the edge of sanity now and then, then this album is for you. Highly recommended.