On August 15, guitarist and composer Lingyuan Yang delivers a powerful statement with his debut release Cursed Month, which is available on compact disc and digital through Chaospace Records. A whirlwind of intricacy and precision, it is a work for trio collecting seven pieces by Yang alongside Shinya Lin on piano and Asher Herzog on drums. In addition to guitar, Yang contributes electronics to an instrumental scheme that encompasses avant-jazz improvisational fireworks and prog-metal heaviness launching from a foundation built on microtonality and an electroacoustic bedrock. Cursed Month brings a fresh voice into the New Music sphere.
Lingyuan Yang has studied extensively, earning a BFA from The New School. His mentors include Ingrid Laubrock, Anna Webber, Matt Mitchell, and Peter Evans, and his playing reflects a deep interest in a wide range of stylistic disciplines. On one hand, Cursed Month brings the power trio thunder, and on the other, it is supple and labyrinthine a la the best of experimental improvisation.
Yang speaks in a voice of strong musicality that’s lacking in the tentative, and he’s confident enough as a creator to partner with players as dynamic as Shinya Lin and Asher Herzog. Favoring a clean-toned approach over enveloping waves of distortion, Yang’s technical proficiency will surely drop more than a few jawbones, but he’s just as likely to cede the spotlight to his bandmates.
Lin moves up and down the keyboard with a boisterousness that avoids the manic; there’s always a sense of control in Cursed Month’s collectivity, even when Yang’s electronic additives fervently splatter forth. And Herzog is spry as he moves around his kit, but he’s still the anchor that establishes much of this trio’s rock inclination.
Yang’s playing doesn’t easily invite comparisons to rock’s preeminent string-slingers, in part due to the lack of distortion, but more so, there’s nothing tangibly bluesy in his style. Opener “Ritual Fire” finds him stretching out on the album’s longest piece, a compositionally vast canvas that underscores the ambitiousness of the trio project.
“Moondial” sets some recognizably jazzy streams into motion and gives Lin some space to shine in this regard across a far more succinct duration and a finale of explosive precision. “The Song of the Mist” begins more quietly, conjuring an atmosphere that’s in keeping with the piece’s title, cymbals clatter and electronics chatter along the way to a bursting-out of wiggling angularity, and then it’s Lin getting off once again on the way to sweet tandem ruckus.
From there, “Send Off the Ghosts” commences as a locomotive sprint with flashes of electronic liquidity and an ascending collective freeform abstraction. After a brief respite, there’s another plunge into the maelstrom. “Spring Snow” rises up slowly and is quite pretty as it progresses, though the energies do increase, hitting an apex before settling down once more.
There’s an occasional sonic congruence to bassist Trevor Dunn’s work with guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Ches Smith across Cursed Month, and during the late track “Bloodstain” in particular. “The Sound of the Mountain” dishes out a similarly snaky, lopsided circularity for the close. Altogether, the album is a striking first statement for Lingyuan Yang in a trio that will hopefully take it on the road with further recordings to come.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
