This CD is wild, raucous ride for anyone interested in new approaches to recording, improvisation, and composition.Yonilicious is a collection of musical vignettes which mutate various genres in an unpredictable manner. The selections are not quite songs nor improvisational free jams! They are strewn together to make a discontiunous whole, leaving the listner capitvated by the high energy rhythmic force and unpredictable twist and turns.
If you like intense rhythm, progressive/experimental music, and music which overflows with creativity, this is a must have! -cdbaby
I read somewhere that Yonilicious — an album of instrumental space-rockish vignettes — started off as a 40-minute-long solo track by drummer and mastermind Frank Grau (also formerly of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), over which Grau and various compatriots overdubbed parts on a variety of other instruments. Listening to this album with that in mind, it seems entirely plausible, because Grau's drumming is pretty much off the hook the entire time. He's all over the place, seeming to propel the music to new heights every time this mostly improvised affair seems in danger of bogging down or becoming tedious.
As one might guess from the title, the musicians on Yonilicious don't take themselves too seriously. Having initially heard the more sober Orgone Therapy I was a bit taken by surprise by the moments of whimsy here — the Yoshida-like vocals on "Pt. II," for instance, the brief use of a touchtone telephone as a melodic lead instrument in the very RIO-like "Pt. IX," or the tongue-firmly-in-cheek clichéd ending to "Pt. XI," which closes the album. Many of the melodies have an almost circus-like feel to them, adding to the sense that these guys were just having a lot of spontaneous fun in recording this.
While Grau's rather maximalistic drumming is a constant, the style of music is hardly so. In fact, while the entire album flows together as one long improvisation, each of the eleven parts is distinctly different from what came before, making Yonilicious a pastiche of individual vignettes united only by Grau's percussion. There are free-jazz blowouts, slow folky shuffles, post-rocky tension building, moments of symphonic grandeur, and hints of everything from Latin jazz to klezmer to absurdism. Most pieces are brief, with the notable exception of "Pt.X," a beautiful ten-minute ballad that takes the listener on a journey through dreamy percussion, gently meandering flute melodies, and a perfect, quiet two-minute comedown after a slightly more energetic saxophone solo.
Although it's not as compelling or coherent as the improvisational masterpiece that was to follow in the form of Orgone Therapy, there's plenty of good stuff on Yonilicious for fans of off-the-wall space rock. -from progreviews.com
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