Sunday, August 22, 2010

Yoran - Love Bitterness / Tagalong 7" (1986)

Tracklisting

Side A
Love Bitterness

Side B
Tagalong


Released: 1986
Label: Night Gallery
Catalogue number: Night-003
Format: 7" single

Length: 12:06

Before I start talking about this 7", I'd like to extend thanks to nattliga_toner for allowing me to share some music here at Habit Of Sex. If you haven't yet, please check out his posting of Yoran's first single over at my blog Stalking Duppi. This is only the first of a few records I plan to guest-post here, and up next are a few items that were requested in the comments section... so stay tuned!

If you're familiar with Yoran's "Montparnasse" single, get ready for a very dramatic change of sound! Gone are the wispy, foggy meanderings of his days on Unbalance Records, as Yoran (here in collaboration with Nagi Ganmo) plants his feet firmly in the dynamically-produced, post-Art Of Noise world of the mid-to-late 80s!

"Love Bitterness", opening with one of those "reverse-echo" effects that brings to mind some New Order material from the same time period, is a fun, catchy number sung in English (though I'm still trying to catch all the lyrics). There are a number of sonic elements at play here -a nice twinkling guitar line, machine-gun drum patterns, synth-stabs of varied textures- that are all thrown in the spin-cycle during a particularly ludicrous instrumental break, which follows a rather nice vocal turn from Yoran - my favorite moment of the song. Great hook too, so don't be surprised if it gets stuck in your head.

Following up on the B-Side is "Tagalong" (called "Tag Along" on the label). The beginning of this song is quite nice: a big, synthy melody that quickly turns groovy. While it is slightly more mellow than the A-Side, "Tagalong" is no slacker. The chorus out-hooks "Love Bitterness", and the instrumental break is slightly creepy, even.

All-in-all, this is some top-quality 80s cheese!

2 comments:

Janina said...

Thank you for sharing this; I really like Yoran's music! :)

ataneila said...

new link, please?