According to his nice website, Heath Yonaites is a multi-talented artist, also involved in painting and other visual arts, as well as writing short stories. This artist, with an exotic sounding name, has delivered a highly interesting album on the Triumvirate label. After a few cdr’s, this is his first ‘real’ album. “Rim of the Sun” offers us four long experimental ambient tracks, created by using many organic sounds, original samples and field recordings, digitally combined. To quote Yonaites’ website: “Using the term ‘music’ is misleading in my case, sound sculpting is far more appropriate”. He also calls his compositions “aesthetically consistant sonic poems”.
In other words, these are not songs to dance or sing along to, but to enjoy while relaxing in your favourite chair. And when you give this album a little time and concentration, it is indeed a nice aural journey. The soundscapes are higly atmospheric, creating a spacy mood. My favourite track is probably the first one, ‘Lacus somniorum Sinus Aestuum (lakes and bays of the moon)’. The sound on “Rim of the Sun” is very rich and detailed. To obtain this Yonaites uses numerous sound sources, like an empty V8 bottle, metal bowl, wine glasses, burning logs, rain on metal bowls, lake waves, thameslink train, frying pan, and shortwave radio. Further he added geophone recordings of: machine shop floor, iron fence on beach, lakefront pier, mac g4, and blueline machine. The music is not extremely dark, but rather mysterious, and a little melancholic at times. Some tranquil passages are rather meditative and trancelike, while other parts are a bit noisier and busier. An album with a lot of atmosphere and depth.
Oscar Wilde once wrote: ” We all lie at the gutter, but some of us look up at the stars”. Instead of looking through a telescope you could also close your eyes and let yourself drift away in this sonic universe…
