HAMILTON YARNS – rising
(CD, Hark!)
I am pretty sure that
“rising” is a concept album, a story telling album in which each song
takes the story a little further until at the end it is resolved. Compared
to their last double album “Search for the underwater town” which from the
outset was much more concept, but musically offered a much wider variety of
sparse musical vignettes, there is a lot more coherence and compactness in
“rising”, so the guess is that the story told is also a lot more compact
and straight forward. But as of yet I was not able to decipher what that
story might be. In trying to etch out the story to myself I found myself
teetering between “Peter and the wolf” and Karen O’s soundtrack to the
“where the wild things live”-movie. The first mostly for the way certain
instruments seem to speak certain voices in the story and those range from
simple Casio keyboards to some samples to as old fashioned instruments as a
cornet. Though I have to admit I personally like the warm and tender sound
of a cornet very much. Unfortunately, there is just not a lot of music fit
for the real tonality of that special instrument, and most of it has to do
with hunting. The latter mostly for the connotations “rising” allows
for: fantastic medieval settings filled with endless woods and sunshine,
talking animals and wizards of all sizes and proportions and features, good
guys and beautiful maidens and evil hooligans to get rid of. I have to
admit, though, that I am not very familiar with the book nor the movie, as
where I come from it wasn’t such a big classic for children as in
English-speaking areas of the world.
Probably the story or stories
these songs take you through are just as much of the listener’s making as
they are of the input coming from the music. The output is what has been put
in and depends on the ability and history of the one processing it. So for
me, the introductory melody of “Balloons in black and white” sounds like
the score to those fantasy / history movies from the Czech Republic from the
Eighties. And so, as by themselves, bright colored scenes and young boys
finding fortune after a series of tests and adventures enter the story. Even
if you are not able to make a coherent story up or find yourself being
unable to tell a tale properly, there are certain things that will invade
your mind coming from the score that Hamilton Yarns lays down. Innocence and
ease, for instance, as in looking at the world as if it were a constantly
changing kaleidoscope of scenes that people play out for you. Which in
itself is a concept of story-telling rooting in the romantic period around
the end of the eighteenth century. But also drifting through live, looking
at the world with a joyful innocence and seizing the opportunities as they
offer themselves, without pressure, without the aggressive readiness to
elbow yourself into a good position in life, very much like a lot of
children’s tales of the Brothers Grimm. The imperfection in technical
aspects of the music making adds to this kind of innocent outlook on life by
focusing not on skills and education, but on the attitude. Yes, it is
fantasy, not the real world.
Truly, this is a childlike
world Hamilton Yarns inhabits, or rather builds for themselves to inhabit,
and it is this childlike innocence and fervor for telling fantastic tales,
of living in their own dreams and really believing them to be true, that
makes their records such an embracable listen. But it is not a naïve or
dreamlike world, not one without dangers and excitement. This is already the
eigth album that Hamilton Yarns have released, all of them on their own
Hark! Label, which methinks is quite consequential: music so idiosyncratic
in its vision and performance also should be quite unique and
self-sufficient when turning to the production side of music. Maybe a true
fantasy tale works out there in reality.
