Yule – Aaaarrrggh!!!

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Yule, an artist from that favorite island of ours, New Zealand, recently sent Knox Road an email notifying us of his debut CD Aaaarrrggh!!! (now available at www.amplifier.co.nz, www.digirama.co.nz, iTunes and Real Groovy) and gave us the tracks for a listen.

Yule’s music spans a wide variety of experimental sounds – kind of like a mix among other influences of his: Beck, The Roots, and Interpol, except not nearly as polished. As he says on his MySpace, each song tries to be unique in its own way, but blends into a form that is recognizable as Yule’s own. I don’t really know much else about Yule, so I’ll let his words do the talking:

“Each of the songs I wrote on “Aaaarrrggh!!!” tries to be different from the other songs on “Aaaarrggh!!!”, but they all get along. They are all fun songs, but some of them have a darker idea of fun than others. I think it is because some of the songs are more grown up than the other songs. The grown up songs’ idea of fun might be making out at the back of a Quentin Tarantino movie or poking a dead dog with a stick but the little songs would probably have more fun on a jungle gym or in the sand pit.”

You can make your own conclusions. Here’s an article about it. We’re not huge fans of the CD just yet, but we do see potential and look forward to a maturation of sorts.

“Migraine” and “Night Night” are especially strong songs and stand out the most to me.  To highlight “Night Night”, it starts off with some jittery electronica, mixing in hip-hop beats and soft vocals in the background and almost completely changes direction in the middle to something even more trippy and horn-like, then goes back to the beginning sound of the song. Overall, it’s a solid listen – hopefully Yule uses more of this experimentation in the future.

Yule – “Night Night”

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