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Yugen

DEISON/KK NULL

(CD, st.an.da., 2019)

DEISON/KK NULL -Yugen
DEISON/KK NULL

01. Mono no aware
02. Yugen
03. A bit of nothing
04. Glow river
05. Nervi scoperti
06. Fade crack down
07. Ukiyo
08. Dialogo con le stelle morte

KK Null: electronics, noise 
Deison: field recordings, sound processing

Ten years after their first collaboration (“Into”, Silentes, 2009) KK Null and Deison are back together with “Yugen”*, a new work exploring darkness and controlled chaos thru deep and dense sounds. Pulsating and fractured electronics are mixed with an eerie atmosphere of clunks, broken tribal drums and hovering electronic tones. 



YUGEN SU ONDAROCK

A ben dieci anni di distanza l’italiano Cristiano Deison e il giapponese KK Null (Kazuyuki Kishino, membro fondatore della noise band del Sol Levante, Zeni Geva) tornano a collaborare per un nuovo album. Il lavoro è pubblicato in edizione limitata su cd per St.An.Da e s’intitola “Yugen”, una parola giapponese che si può tradurre letteralmente come “leggermente scuro” ma che indica, nel suo senso più ampio, anche qualcosa d’insondabile, misterioso e imperscrutabile.

È proprio un’elettronica astratta quanto oscura, granulare nella sua esplorazione spaziale e micro-emozionale, che ci trasporta in un affiatato e serratissimo corpo a corpo sonoro che sembra lambire introversi e inquieti mondi interni (“Nervi Scoperti” e “Ukiyo”) come infinite vastità cosmiche alla ricerca di un “Dialogo con le stelle morte”, per citare il titolo del brano finale dell’album.
Continua quindi il percorso dei due artisti tra derive noise e glitch sounds, una lunga strada inaugurata nel lontano 2009 con “Into”, e che ora vede in “Yugen” una sorta di gemello imploso, un rendez-vous in cui far emerge il lato più diafano e post-apocalittico della musica cosmica di Deison e KK Null, immaginaria colonna sonora per l’attività di quasar e pulsar.

“Yugen” è un album molto curato e levigato nelle sue texture sonore ma, al contempo, è l’esito di una sperimentazione che non ha timore di giocare con una sorta di caos controllato, quell’imperfezione ricercata e necessaria capace di far balenare un guizzo estetico tra drone music e glitch oscuri.

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YUGEN ON DEATH METAL

Another collaboration from K.K. Null shows us the immense flexibility of the almost pure music he creates from manipulated sound, with Deison providing what sounds like a techno/necrowave framework over which ominous, haunting, and disturbing noise hangs like a funereal curtain.

Songs build like veils of smoke accumulating, parts moving in different directions until some synchrony is reached, at which point the narrative dissolves and something new emerges from the obscurity, creating the combination of ambiguity and hopeful emptiness which drives all outsider music.

With a foot in both worlds, Yugen builds itself from both deliberately erratic digital beats and sound of unclear origins, contrasting the finite and the unknowable in convergent streams which make the crossover between these two appealing, tantalizing, and forbidding. Despite seeming to fit easily within the framework of either style, this release occupies both spaces at once, stimulating the mind with a confounding protean unity in duality.

Like most layered music, it consists of creating something like a groove and then producing complex sounds within it which draw that stability into different directions, prompting the rhythm track to break and go elsewhere, only returning to theme through suggestions of similarity in shape and texture.

Rare for a Null-associated release, Yugen avoids sonic extremities, preferring to subvert rather than bludgeon. It makes for a perplexing listen, both pleasing to the ear and challenging it, taking the howling wildlands of dystopia and bringing them into the living room where all can shiver in bug-eyed horror.

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YUGEN SU SOWHAT

L’oscura percezione dell’effimera ed incostante bellezza del mondo. Ad un decennio di distanza dalla prima volta tornano ad incrociarsi le rotte risonanti di Deison e KK Null, originando un frenetico microcosmo di convulse spirali generate dalla nervosa fusione di inquietudini occidentali e concettuali approcci che permeano la cultura del sol levante.

Ribollenti schegge sintetiche si muovono libere disegnando accidentate traiettorie dall’evoluzione caotica, gradualmente strutturate attraverso lo stridente incastro con ruvide sequenze ritmiche che interpolano i frammenti taglienti fino alla tormentata densità che segna il momento centrale del lavoro. Da qui in poi l’atmosfera  diventa ancor più algida ed inquieta sprigionandosi da incursioni sempre più sotterranee e dilatate che si riversano in una terminale notturna contemplazione di un cielo in definitivo disfacimento.

Un’incursione profonda tra dispotiche visioni costellate da graffianti riverberi e cadenze ancestrali.

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YUGEN SU ADVERSE EFFECT MAGAZINE

Eight collab pieces between these respective prolific Italian and Japanese artists whose own work has long been bobbing on the seas of so-called ‘experimental’ music for a considerable while now. Both of them operate in the medium of digital or heavily processed sound, sometimes sourcing location recordings or a disparate selection of instruments through which to channel their own take on penumbral tones, timbres, haze and splutter meshed together to create atmospheric works sometimes cranked to white-hot levels of overload. Mostly of a more filmic or kaleidoscopic nature yet imbued with undercurrents of more imposing abstract noise, this is all pretty effective. Whether or not either Null or Deison actually bring anything to the table that the other party wouldn’t begs another question, however. 

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YUGEN SU KATHODIK

Dieci anni dopo “Into” (su Silentes), tornano a darsele nell’ombra Cris Deison e il nippo (spesso) furioso KK Null.
Spilli elettronici, aguzzi e blippanti che infestano ogni dove, su tappeto (spesso) monocromo di field in trattamento e toni sospesi in fase di blocco.
Qualche ticchettio da macchinario in inceppo che si disperde in un vuoto scampanellante (A Bit Of Nothing),    lo scampanellio che muta in arcaico fluire (Glow River), circuiti in libero chiacchiericcio (Nervi Scoperti), percussioni in mirabile opera di elongazione a freddo sottovuoto (Fade Crack Down), oscurità in raschiante avvicinamento minaccioso (Ukiyo), persuasiva e romantica vampa minimal gamelan /Coil (Dialogo Con Le Stelle Morte).
Urti, astrazioni e tanto ispirato assemblaggio post.

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YUGEN ON VITAL WEEKLY

Both KK Null and Deison are musicians who love to collaborate, either in person or through the exchange of sound files. I would think this is an example of the latter, as for Null it says recorded at ‘Prima Natura Studio Japan’ and Deison at ‘1st Floor Studio Italy’. He takes credit for ‘field recordings, sound processing’ and Null for ‘electronics, noise’. I can’t say anything sensible about how this worked out. Did Deison process also sound supplied by Null, or vice versa, perhaps? Or is a question of overlaying independently created sound work and see what
dialogue can be formed? As said, I don’t have the answer to this question. Both men are known, well perhaps to some, for their more radical sonic enterprises (although Null more than Deison), to avoid the word ‘noise’ (as a genre, not as an instrument). While the music here isn’t necessarily
very quiet, it is also not the loudest and we see both gentlemen venture into the world of rhythm. Not techno-based, but rather minimalist beat stuff, inspired by the work of Pan Sonic. Interesting enough one could say the same thing about some of the more noisy outings on this release as
well. A piece such as ‘Nervi Scoperti’ has some repeating sounds from a piece of vinyl that got stuck and along with that comes a bit warped electronics. Sometimes the two dwell upon a more ambient industrial/drone soundscape, thus creating a varied dish of musical interests. It is a
release to play with some considerable volume, as I found out, as it will you give a slightly more presence of the music and it all shines a bit more. This is a collaboration that turned out to be great!


YUGEN SU RUMORE


YUGEN SU BLOW UP