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Have Some Madeira, M’Dear – and all because of Yourai.
TafelMuzak Nº 098 von Leonhard Lorek
"Eat up, kiddo!" is a conveniently simple phrase that any child can immediately understand, but its imperative mood is counterproductive to preventing a child from structurally analysing its fruit salad with a teaspoon. Explaining to a child that the balance of forces to stabilise a spoon can best be brought about in the mouth rather than in the salad promises little in the way of success. But the child should eat, even eat it up, at once. Patience is required. Assuming that here a short and convincing dialogue – in which the child asks about the music scudding through the computer at the same time – were inserted into the column at this point, we could from now on also taste Yourai's "Koveral", in the text. "And how does he make the music?" asks the child. "With his mouth. Yourai does it just with his mouth, everything." "How can he do that with his mouth? Just with his mouth?" "Oh, he practiced a lot. When he was eating and swallowing and chewing." "Spewing?" "You heard me the first time, you young scamp. When someone makes music just with his mouth it's called a cappella. Now 'a cappella' doesn't mean 'like in church'. Take a look around. We aren't in a vestry, you aren't altar boy and I'm not a vicar. So swallowing won't be followed by spewing today at least. 'Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,' said Sigmund Freud. And that there, in your bowl, is nothing more than a fruit salad. A delicious one, admittedly. With Madeira in it." From such a presumptive beginning we could certainly develop a choice piece of text. Our aim of getting the kid to open his mouth before having to clean his teeth in the evening could be achieved with Yourai's album. We could deal en passant with Pope Benedict’s pastoral letter to the Irish Catholics and the practice of drugging the whinging children entrusted to one's care with alcohol. Yes, the column could be deprived of its last remnants of contemplativeness through sly allusions of this kind, and amen to that. But to make a good text from lush material takes time and patience. And that's were the fun stops, for me. After almost nine years in a row and 70 columns I no longer have much patience, and it’s time for a change of scene. This TafelMuzak is my last. The nice thing about this moment is that my finale is about a distinctly original and very well-made album. And there’s another reason why Yourai's "Koveral" fits the bill right now: there were good reasons for the idea of a review column around the subject of eating. At a time in which anyone can find out at once about newly released music on the Web, and listen to it straight away instead of being introduced to it through the dubious expertise or authority of a reviewer, authors have little motivation to write reviews. What usually remains – apart from the fee – is the pleasure of writing itself on the one hand and the enjoyment of the readership on the other. So the idea of translating the sensual with the sensual was at least appealing enough to launch a column that related food and music – long before the TV channels started to fill the gaps in their programmes with cooking shows. Eating and drinking are of course not exclusively oral pleasures. But never mind, Yourai's oral acrobatics are a welcome reason for my last regular TafelMuzak – leaving fate aside here. The album could also be dealt with, without boring anyone, in a conventional review. So what follows – because I've run out of patience in the meantime – is a portion of classical reviewing. Yourai aka Juraj Hubinák from Bratislava isn't the Slovak reincarnation of the Comedian Harmonists in one. No! We're living in the 21st century after all. And the guy is a class of his own. Then there's the fact that as far as I know "Koveral" is the first album since Stina Nordenstam's "People Are Strange" that really keeps the promise of its title. Rockers might cover a piece faster or slower, louder or quieter, and at best that’s it. But Yourai is no rock'n'roller. Musicians before him have made something completely their own out of other people's material – in individual tracks. But I can't think of many artists who have been able to keep it up for the length of an album. The last – as I said – was Stina Nordenstam in 1998. Ms Nordenstam dispatched classics by Leonard Cohen, Prince and other pop greats into amorphousness, roughly breaking them to pieces to make them her own. Yourai's approach is entirely different. For one thing he doesn't work with classics. At least they aren't yet. Even pieces by Björk or Portishead – whose "We Carry On" he inventively swings – are still too young to pass as classics. The others are tracks by pretty average types that in his versions gain the potential to become classics – if it weren't for the miserable state of the net, in which the relevant structures that could transport this material to the niches that would be gratefully responsive to it still haven't developed. In short, Yourai is giving away his album. He's not selling it. The link to the free download is at the bottom of this page in the rubric "Label". With all their differences the albums of Stina Nordenstam and Yourai have something in common: both are porous, stubborn, transparent and in a surprisingly diffident way beguiling. Respect! By the way, thanks to the cover versions the child in the Muzak could also have had fun with the fruit salad if he had been allowed to close his eyes and guess what was in each spoonful, and what the individual ingredients had originally been. "A piece of strawberry and a piece of pear?" "Right. But you don't like strawberries." "Hmm, but like this they taste nice." "That's more or less how Yourai does it in his music. Here, I'll show you Marissa Nadler singing 'Fifty Five Falls' on YouTube." The child would have screwed up his nose at the Nadler video. "Yes, you’re right. Sort of poor man's Joan Baez. Would you like to see silly Patrick Wolf?" No. The child would have shaken his head. And closed his eyes. "All right, then let's listen to 'Railway House' again in Yourai's version. With eyes closed and the spoon in his mouth the child would have nodded in agreement. Stop! I'm out of patience, as I've already mentioned. Working for free in a society entirely subjugated to economics should only be allowed in two cases: either the work is enjoyable, very enjoyable, or you work for friends. In Yourai's case it's obvious throughout "Koveral" that the work is enjoyable. In my case I hope Philipp and Evgenij will soon find someone to replace me. Gentlemen, it was really great to work with you. And I'd be glad to write the occasional GuestMuzak once in a while – just in case I get sentimental. Or if I come across an album that induces me to work for free. That’s all on the subject of The Last Time. Apropos free: Michael Turnbull waived his fee to translate this column into English. Thanks Michael!
Künstler: Yourai http://www.myspace.com/yourai
Album: Koveral
Label: Free download. Please ignore all annoying demands on Sendspace and only use the orange download button: http://www.sendspace.com/file/h8umh5
Vertrieb: Online
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Zutaten
Recipe Easy-peasy fruit salad Ingredients: Fresh fruit – the different fruits should have different consistencies. A tin of mandarins, pineapple, figs or mango. Madeira
Zubereitung
Preparation: First and foremost: no Madeira in a fruit salad for children, easy-peasy or not. Peel and core the fruit and cut into small pieces. Add a portion of mandarins, pineapple, figs or mango from the tin. Mix together carefully. Fruits like raspberries or wild strawberries are very delicate and should be scattered into the salad after mixing. Add a few drops of Madeira when the children have gone to bed.