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Review: 'Ten'
'Yukon Youth'   

-  Album: 'Yukon Youth'
-  Genre: 'Ambient' -  Release Date: '31st October 2016'

Our Rating:
‘Yukon Youth’ takes its inspiration from a two-week trek across Alaska, and references Jon Krakauser’s 1997 book ‘Into the Wild’, which tells of Chris McCandless’ ill-fated journey into the Alaskan wild which ended in the discovery of his decomposing body. The official cause of death was recorded as starvation. The same story also provided the material for the Sean Penn movie and a documentary a decade in 2007.

It may be that the track titles make more sense in context, but on their own, they’re enigmatic and limited in their connotations beyond being mere markers – alphabetic cairns, if you will, waymarkers on a difficult journey into the unknown.

The album’s nine tracks are intended to convey the immensity and the unpredictability of the Alaskan landscape and climate. It begins with a weighty, expansive sweep of sound, which bleeds, via a wavering, tapering drone, into the, polytonal kaleidoscope of ‘VZ’, dominated by a thunderous landslide of bass. A quiet hissing fizz – static? The movements of distant body of water? Provide brief respite from the oppressive forces and give way to a soft, wavering expanse of sound. Slow tremolo guitar shimmers across ‘CA’, and evokes a barren but nevertheless majestic and awe-inspiring vista. The dreamy ambience of ‘DP’ passes cloud-like but with an underlying texturally-derived tension.

The ebb and flow builds to a panoramic surge of sound. Granular, ambient shoegaze sounds trail through the dense atmosphere, which grows denser and darker on the ominous eighth track soaked in subterranean frequencies. The yawning abyss of the final track is an engulfing sonic vortex which swirls menacingly, with a force strong enough to consume everything in its path, drawing the album to its inexorably bleak end.

It's hard not to feel affected in some way, or to fail to feel the power of the landscape which inspired the album. It’s a strong reminder that however strong the man, however advanced, whatever the strength of human society, whatever the circumstance, nature always wins.
Ten Online

  author: Christopher Nosnibor

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Ten - Yukon Youth