This Wilderlessness

Biography

Music has always had a relationship with the changing seasons, soundtracks that follow nature’s ambling course through the year. Summer necessitates music with an overabundance of energy. Autumn and winter often find us lost in slower, darker songs as the year comes to its close and we ponder our relationship with the passing time. Spring is a period rebirth, thawing, and new life, and we chose our music accordingly. Often this relationship with seasons requires the creation of mixtapes drawing...

Music has always had a relationship with the changing seasons, soundtracks that follow nature’s ambling course through the year. Summer necessitates music with an overabundance of energy. Autumn and winter often find us lost in slower, darker songs as the year comes to its close and we ponder our relationship with the passing time. Spring is a period rebirth, thawing, and new life, and we chose our music accordingly.

Often this relationship with seasons requires the creation of mixtapes drawing from a number of bands, removing songs with a certain feeling from their usual context and combining them with similar tracks. Or sometimes we intensely listen to records that seems to embody the time of year, bands with a distinct sound – upbeat or down-tempo, sunny or glacial, and so on.

Finales by Yamon Yamon is an exercise in emotional malleability, ever present and vibrant no matter what the season, the mood, or weather. The layers of music present a different face, an alternate tapestry of meaning as our ears listen for those emotions that seem so necessary at the time. Periods of darkness expose the vast, atmospheric guitars – as can be heard so wonderfully on ‘Surf’ - and a vulnerability in Jon’s voice. The sunlight streaming through our windows brings a mature form of happiness to the forefront, explored in ‘Kraut’; that emotion which is well aware of life’s ups and downs, and remains constant and buoyant when we are drowning in one of life’s many challenges, and never lets us slip too far under the water.

Yamon Yamon was initially created by Christoffer Öberg and Jon Lennblad during their time at Wiks Folkhögskola outside of Uppsala, Sweden. The pair recorded a few demos at the school’s recording facilities and continued their partnership as the years passed. At the time they drew heavily from the influences of Tortoise and other pivotal post-rock bands, and an element of that initial project is still present in today’s configuration, but a change was needed – and it came in the form of Joakim Labraaten.

New music had infiltrated the band as the years passed, and with Joakim’s involvement everything clicked for Yamon Yamon. A new spark had been lit and the fire that had initially caused Jon and Chris to start up the band grew out of their control. Infusing elements of jazz, experimental punk, and persuasions from bands like Broken Social Scene, American Football, Sea & Cake, and Joan of Arc, songs flowed easily from within the trio. Don't let that grouping confuse you, there are so many original and unique sounds contained within the record, which is what makes Yamon Yamon able to stand so easily on its own feet, and not on the shoulders of others' accomplishments.

Recording with Daniel Vegerfors (of the Third Try Social Club), who also recorded friends Elias & the Whizkids, Finales came to be.

Having been involved in so many other projects in their lives, often together, Jon and Chris’ schoolboy dream was finally realized, brought to fruition with Joakim, and taking all the time it had needed, affected by every passing season. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.