Yamila – Noor (Umor Rex) – This album has been on and off the (virtual) turntable for weeks and weeks now, really really must say something about it before things are past their sell-by-date and covered in little yellow stickers. It is a non-stop operation here and there are only so many days in the week and not enough weeks in the month, there really is too much competing for attention and ear time and so much of it worthy of so much more time than it can possible be given around here and doesn’t that second piece of music on Yamila’s second album lives up to that title so well, it really does ascend – Ascensión cascades so gloriously before that gentle bow of cello (or whatever that beautifully played string instrument is) leads us into depth of Sin desarraigo and further into the intrigue of Noor as one whole body of work. Noor is an album just released through Mexico City-based label Umor Rex, an album that I’ve enjoyed spending a lot of time with over the last couple of month. an album that should have been covered here weeks ago if I hadn’t just been enjoying it too much to actually get around to writing about it.
And it is a sense of intrigue that this new work leaves you with, that warm intriguing intertwining of classical strings and organic-sounding electronics, of quiet voice and yes, sculpted soundscapes that the Madrid-based Spanish cellist, singer and producer leaves you with. Yamila’s art is warmly intriguing. And without being obvious, it does sound kind of Spanish in terms of the colour of it all. Noor sounds inviting, dusky, alive with more than one layer of beauty, it sounds classical in a way that isn’t quite locked in that classical world to the exclusion of everything else; “The album was born under the shelter of a secret ecological community. There, among damp meadows and the song of a blackbird, Yamila feels an ancient urge to sing to the bees. Inspired by ancestral rituals in which sound served as a bridge between species – to summon herds or soothe the trembling sky – the artist listens to the wind and reimagines that lost practice through a contemporary language: titanic harmonies dissolving into fragile microtones, rhythms that pulse not merely as measure, but as breath that stirs the body”
Noor is uplifting, bright, never ever obvious, always wanting to take us down (quiet) side streets to see things we might have missed, to take us over that hill or around that corner to find that bird’s eye view we otherwise would have missed. Noor is an album that needs to be (quietly) expansive, that wants to (quietly) stir emotion and Lo animal is glorious; Lo animal feels like a secret parade that you should consider it a privilege to be invited to take part in –
“Since ancient times, sound has been used to care for herds, to call across distances, to communicate with the non-human. Noor reimagines that ancestral role in a contemporary language, where epic harmonies collide with delicate micro-tonalities, and where rhythm unfolds not only as pulse but as movement for the body, a natural extension of Yamila’s work with dance companies and choreographers”
Noor is an album that’s just really enjoyable to listen to, to just go with, to spend quality time with. And importantly Yamila’s voice is woven in to it all, part of the fabric of it it rather than just sitting on top of it, her voice is a real part of it, in there with the resonant strings of Echo Collective, in there as part of the whole the warp and weft of the whole thing, with the creating of those views, that warm intensity. At times monumental and full bodied, at other times the whole thing is almost whispered as it shimmers between the composition that still manages to feel at times like something spontaneous.
Noor is an album that’s never difficult, that’s always inviting, a rich album, a warm album, an album that has depth, that has soul, that feels like it has real meaning, that just, without ever needing to challenge us as listeners by being awkward, difficult or hard-boiled, an album and a body of work that just has something more in there that makes you want to engage with the quiet warmth of it all and then to go back to it again and again and again (so much so that you almost forget to write about it…) (sw)
THE ORGAN 