3 out of 5

Label: Skin Graft Records

Produced by: Steve Albini

A repetitious hodge-podge in the vein of Brise-Glase and You Fantastic! – not surprisingly sharing members with both – Yona-Kit’s bass / drums / oddly-tuned guitars stomp is mainly differentiated by the presence of vocalist K.K. Null, who alternately croaks and loosely sings through the majority of these tunes.

Within that arrangement, though, there’s also a lesson in how slight shifts make a huge difference in how tracks are perceived: most of Y-K LP is actually rather boring, I’d say, the group’s march-like pace and Null’s inexpressive singing voice making the midsection of the disc kind of indistinctive. Which is interesting, since their general sound is rather atonal, but it’s like everything is pitched just a few degrees below any actual emotion to really land. However, there’s are select tracks where things get a bit more muscley, and Null starts shouting about Franken-bitches and Skeleton Kings, and the sound finds a place: like a more moderate Ruins tune, and/or more linear than Brise-Glase’s O’Rourke-manipulated workouts. And my heart goes out to the masterwork of drone / noise that is the 23-minute attack of Slice of Life that closes out the disc: employing a You Fantastic! like framework of repetition of a Albini-captured drum beat and stuttering guitars and bass, the track almost seems like it’s looping until it isn’t, dropping in sudden (if slight) swerves in pace or volume.

So within this little ring of experimental noise rock, Yona-Kit LP is probably the disc I return to the least, but it’s highlights are also possibly the most accessible, or the most gutturally satisfying, balanced out by some more middling material.