Godard made films about light, Yanling makes music about sound. Her album Cymatic releases on 6th December. It feels cinematic, like her work with Theatre Gessnerallee, Zurich and Bob Kil at Museum Thorvaldsen, Copenhagen. Grand and wide-open, her new compositions take a break from the attention-grabbing drums of her early releases. The Berlin-based Swiss-Hong Kongese musician, who made her debut in Zurich’s left-field dance scene, is set to be the first release on Aurora Edition, her event series turned label she founded.
Yanling’s Aurora Edition has gained renown by featuring artists like Tangerine Dream’s Hoshiko Yamane, Evita Manji, and Grand River. It comes as no surprise, then, that we hear a nod to Tangerine Dream on her new record. The rising musician’s insistent synthetic melody on the yet-to-be released track 5, Fallen Tempest, harks back to Tangerine Dream’s 80s masterpiece of electronica, Love On A Real Train. This time, encased in very cold echoing layers of instrumentation, the lead melody feels much airier than its reference. Fallen Tempest is a good example of Yanling’s confidence with dystopian sonic registers. It’s a strong favourite that evokes the icy visual world of the record.
There is a true sense of awe in this album. Drawn-out strings and urgent piano that races along like a skimming stone in opener Transmuted transform into something more eerie in track 2 Cymatic. Yanling’s titular track already has a music video out, which makes a lot of sense since Cymatic relates to making sound vibrations visible, a technique that was developed by Swiss physician Hans Jenny. Shot on the Rhone Glacier in Switzerland, during the Cymatic video we follow the musician as she explores her harsh surroundings. Much like the overall album, the palette is limited and considered, metallic, cold and expansive.
Drone, ambient and experimental music all have their place in Aurora Edition events (and now releases) with this album taking up the baton for ambient. Elongated melodies give a sense of spending time in unmoving natural surroundings, like the glacier or a damp forest. Spacious compositions are favoured here over staccato or grinding rhythms of contemporary life. There’s a sense of escapism to that which we can’t get enough of.
