Yol & David Curington - A Typical Sunday

Released: February 13

A collaborative effort from two avant-garde artists, A Typical Sunday is an album filled with lurid soundscapes provided by Curington and anxiety-inducing spoken word insanity provided by Yol. It all makes for a jarring combination that is off-putting and alluring at the same time. The way the album is put together is also rather discombobulating as it moves from a short and sparse tracks and then right into longer ones packed with all manner of noisy bits and pieces that change up without any warning. Everything is arranged in such a way as to punctuate the madness of the voices which consist of broken phrases screamed at the listener and nonsensical vocalizations that sound like they are causing physical pain to the speaker. 

The first track, "Waking Up with the Sun" is one of the shorter tracks but the aggressive and repetitive glitching instantly assaults the ears as the louder part subside periodically and suddenly to give way to the incoherent and similarly glitched screams of Yol. "Nattering Away" is a sparse piece that is almost entirely nonsensical vocalizations that vary wildly in volume and distance, with some seemingly being right in your face and other coming from two rooms away and behind you. The spacing and setting within the sound field is both mesmerizing and unnerving. 

The album ends with a nearly half-hour long piece that seems to eschew the vocals until the halfway point, with the little there are coming in very clear. And this is where I really began to connect the theme of these seemingly incoherent phrases - police tape, after an incident, smashed windows. The traumatized quality of Yol's utterances suggest something quite dark. Like an event that haunts the one who experiences it for years, if not the rest of their life. It's an very fragmented story that is told in small and noisy bits, but an interesting and uncomfortable one.