Yair Yona is a gifted Israeli musician who has established himself as a highly accomplished finger-picker in the same vein as John Fahey or Jack Rose. Like those two artists he draws freely from traditional folk, classical music and contemporary rock.
While he could easily have forged a solid career for himself playing ragtime blues and ragas, the scope of his influences and ambitions extend much further. This was first evidenced for me in Skinny Fists, the 8-minute closing track from his debut album, Remember (2011), in which he pays musical homage to Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
This willingness to work outside restrictive boundaries bears fruits for his third solo album, his boldest and most accomplished work to date.
'Sword' was conceived as an imaginary soundtrack of a war that took place between Israel, Egypt and Syria in 1973, known as the Yom-Kippur war or October War.
This reference point may be very specific but, as the artist notes, the music could easily apply to any conflict since its emphasis is on universal themes of personal endurance and trauma.
Yona explains: "In ten compositions, I documented a number of individual, private situations, with no attempt whatsoever to correspond with the accepted national ethos".
The music encompasses a broad and sophisticated palette with styles including folk, ambient, electronica, post-rock and modern classical. His arrangements use conventional musical instruments and also incorporate radio samples courtesy of the Ministry Of Defense Archive. The effect is to convey the boredom, stress and horror of modern day warfare.
Tracks like Seven Days In Complete Darkness and 2.37am, Every Night For 43 Years are particularly disquieting in the way they evoke the disorientation one might feel when there is no real sense of time passing.
Yair Yona succeeds in giving a sonic framework to the experience of living "as if the distortion pedal is always on, throughout the daily life".
The orchestral sweep of Walking Towards The Closed Door is another example of how he manages to establish a vivid and dramatic setting. This ends with someone knocking on a door, a sound which, in this context, takes on a menacing aspect and is in marked contrast to the elegiac mood of tracks like Waiting and Innocence.
Despite the bleak subject matter, Yona has stated that he was eager to conclude this record with feelings of hope and compassion.
To this end, Early In The Morning is a reading of a text by Israeli poet Rachel Shapira about a group of soldiers after the war. The final stanza is translated as follows: "Tender and merciful the sun came up, And shed new light on the horror and hope, And anyone who was there prayed for comfort from above, In grace and devotion, forgiveness and love".
The artist's recommendation is to listen to the album as a form of meditation with eyes shut, mobile phone off, and with deep attention. I can vouch for the fact that this would be a highly rewarding way to spend 37 minutes of your time.
