Interlude: "Painless" Release Weekend

The majesty of Nilüfer Yanya's sonic innovations RUDELY intrudes on the apocalypse.

Readers who are exhausted with worrying about whether the shaky study from Sweden is or isn’t evidence (it isn’t¹) that the Covid vaccines are “rewriting our genome” (that isn’t really how the genome works, because there is no “the genome”), will be delighted by the post I have currently in the works, which offers reasons to worry that the Covid vaccines are doing way worse stuff than that.

Meanwhile, a flagrant violation of normal content guidelines, to hail Nilüfer Yanya’s new release, PAINLESS.

For readers unfamiliar with Yanya’s music, here is my favorite, from her debut. The collage-like signature that runs trough Yanya’s visuals - with industrial scenery in sharp juxtaposition against floral tones - perfectly conveys what is so spectacular about her musical designs:

Just as in a collage, none of the voices in Yanya’s songs are asked to blend or disguise themselves to conform to the song as a whole. The electric guitar in “Paralysed” is not asked to fill the empty corners of the mid-range, erasing the contours that define its natural texture. The whole, in Yanya’s music, is the sum of the parts, and Yanya allows each instrument of her studio to be as much “itself” as possible. The result is that nearly every song is an astonishing novelty, at least under close examination.

And yet Yanya does not treat her songs as mere “works of art.” She relates to them organically, and her songs come to the listener with the marks of being well-worn by the artist and her studio compatriots. Observe how the sultry, meandering nostalgia of “Paradise” (also from the debut) veers into a hard rocker, with Yanya in pure performance mode at the end:

Did the soft open of “Paradise” grow out of the riff-heavy groove at the end, or vice versa? All that is certain on first glance is that Yanya has lived with the song as the reader is hearing it. And only in further listening does the logic of the conversion, and Yanya’s incredible restraint in the opening chorus, become obvious and irresistible.

All of this remains true in PAINLESS, her sophomore release, which only modifies her (anti-) formula in that there are fewer rough edges, for better or worse. In particular, Yanya offers more careful attention to the rhythm in the upbeat tracks. This grants these songs more coherent structure and a more confident sound, so that they effortlessly flow in and out of simple, hypnotic beats. But it also means there are no rhythmically ambiguous, but spectacular “just what is this?” entries (as with “Paralysed”) this go-round.

I’ll spare the reader my highlights here (though reader favorites are welcome in the comments, if there are any pre-existing fans among Unglossed subscribers; and general Currently Listening chit-chat is also welcome). I recommend exploring the album from start to finish.

1. See “Shaky DNA integration study.” Note that I have provisionally rescinded the remarks that the DNA amplification section “flunked” in the control, based on additional feedback in the comments. However, I still actually think I will turn out to be right about this one.

I may yet issue another follow-up, to address the current “discourse” which has veered into a weird focus on whether the integration is “real” or “chromosomal” integration, or not. This is not a coherent way to view the question. DNA, once in the nucleus, does not have to be “in the chromosomes” to divide with fidelity; nor would being “in the chromosome” grant said DNA some magic status akin to rewriting the DNA of more than just the transfected cell and its descendants. The fact that alleged geneticists are framing the debate in this matter is quite silly.