Yellow6 - When The Leaves Fall Like Snow
[Make Mine Records]

Following a brief stint on the now semi-defunct Resonant label for 2007’s Painted Sky, Jon Attwood’s Yellow6 project returns to familiar territory in the shape of Make Mine Music (an imprint he co-founded in 2002) for the mammoth two disc set “When The Leaves Fall Like Snow”. Written during a six-week stint in Stockholm during the Swedish winter, Attwood collects sixteen separate pieces together incorporating a variety of guitar textures, occasionally using an e-bow and lap steel. Computer enhancements are kept to a bare minimum, with only and handful of tracks featuring percussive elements that help to add variety to the overall flow of the record. Continuing the stripped-down feel of his previous effort, Attwood steers clear of synthesizers, every note, tone and melody is created by guitar.

As far as pensive six-string composition goes Attwood, with over 60 releases behind him, has got it down to a fine art, employing just the right amount of reverb and the right amount of looping delay to his rich, full-bodied arrangements. Opting to develop each piece in a slow, almost painstaking manner, much of the music featured here contains a similar vibe to that of the recent Budd/Guthrie collaboration, with tracks like “Moderna” paralleling the celestial, breathless beauty of “After the Night Falls / Before the Day Breaks” (album review).

That’s not to say that a Yellow6 release is completely ambient, not the bland discount supermarket variety anyway. Although the likes of Stars of the Lid and Labradford are an undeniable influence, the ambient tag has never really suited Attwood’s style. Neither has electronic nor post-rock. It would appear he ploughs a field all to his own, drawing inspiration from all of these genres to construct a sound that is immediately his own. In an age where the need to tag music is essential, perhaps Isolationism depicts Yellow6’s music perfectly. “Still Water”, a twelve minute opener doused in a forlorn melancholia, conveys a strong sense of solitude within its elongated structure and hypnotic textures.

The Labradford comparisons are particularly apparent in Attwood’s sense of sound and tension. A number of tracks, from the orchestral-like “Mellan” to the gorgeous “Norwest Passage”, match the form of that particular illustrious trio. The latter in particular employs a simple chord change that shifts the emotional focus of the composition into optimistic climes, like sunlight piercing bleak, grey clouds. It is trick he performs to near perfection on several occasions. Take “Katarinhissen”, for example, one of the many epics featured here. The track ambles along rather peacefully and in a somnifacient fashion, utilizing a slowly repeated guitar arrangement and soft sound embellishments derived from the instrument’s pick-ups. While masking the listener in a comforting blanket of sound for several minutes, a deft chord change soon directs us towards the heavens, with the guitar emulating a cathedral-like reverence.

As a former punk musician, turned guitar conceptualist, Attwood’s music is probably as far away as you could possibly get from his anarchistic roots. Yet scratch beneath the surface and you will find these pieces contain a similar passion, spirit and emotional aesthetic, it’s just delivered in a less vigorous manner. While his sound can be nocturnal, desolate, unforgiving even, it can also evoke images of poignancy. Like the cool “Street Writing” where the guitar textures summon images of ice slowly melting into little pools of water or the hazy “All Space”, which brings to mind an early Winter horizon, where the sun gradually begins its ascent.

While “When The Leaves...” doesn’t depart drastically stylistically from previous efforts, the sonorous instrumental sounds constructed here take on a composed quality, cinematic in scope and choc full of yearning, melancholic movements. Last year, Make Mine Music released their finest album to date in Epic45’s “May Your Heart Be Your Map”. Make no mistake; Yellow6’s latest effort is cut from the same cloth.

Disc 1 : Fall Tracklisting:

Still Water
Street
Katarinahissen
Två
Leaves Fall Like Snow
Street Writing
Disc 2 : Further Tracklisting:

All Space
Amateur
You Can’t Be Everywhere He Said
Everything Changes
Norwest Passage
Moderna
Mellan
Last Saturday
Magasin2
Tre