Yuval Ron & Residents Of The Future – ‘Residence Of The Future’ [Review]
Open any book on increasing your productivity, and you’ll find this ubiquitous piece of advice: “Never check your email in the morning.” It’s often backed up with a statement along the lines of “Email is the mind-killer.” Not just any mind-killer, but the mind-killer.
Perhaps my inbox is unique, then. The messages it contains consistently offer me the opportunity to expand my mind, not blunt or damage or kill it. This is, definitely, partly due to Gmail’s super-effective spam filters (no more “COLLECT YOUR NIGERIAN LOTTERY WINNINGS” subject lines), but it’s mainly due to messages from musicians like Yuval Ron.
Yuval Ron’s music manages to make you listen and think without draining your mental energy. It’s complex, multifaceted and intricate, yes – but there’s something refreshing and cognitively nourishing buried in there. An appreciation of the need for space, a permission given for the music to breathe and really come to life.
Opening trio of tracks Prelude; Greetings, Earthling; and Objects In The Mirror Are Larger Than They Appear sum up the first dimension of Yuval Ron’s core style. Combining Gustav Holst’s flair for epic-scale emotional impact and intimate immersion with Allan Holdsworth’s fretboard mastery and love of imposingly dense harmonic structures, each of these tunes stirs the soul like few fusion works can. Best Before 2074 cuts in with intriguing electronica, and proceedings get increasingly intense from this point onward: Sayonara, Milkyway! and Watching Over Shizutani Bay Part 2 are underpinned by funky grooves and separated by Watching Over Shizutani Bay Part 1 – an eerily atmospheric mix of noise and unpredictable instrumentation.
Residential Guitar Solo, Yuval Ron’s real time to shine, is understated and tasteful, melody heavy and masturbation-free, while Residence Of The Future and Long Distance Call are pure fusion, extended demonstrations of jazz-rock mastery and good taste. The set finally concludes with Postlude, within which washes of noise give way to more Holst-influenced proceedings before the whole thing fades into the distance.
All of this can be summed up in a single equation: Yuval Ron = Holst x Holdsworth.
That should really be all you need.
Links / Listen
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