The Asymptotical World EP picks up where Yves Tumor left off with their last album, opening up Tumor as a vocalist and performer.
It hasn’t been such a long time since we last heard from Yves Tumor, who spent last year enjoying much-deserved praise for their fourth studio album, Heaven to a Tortured Mind, which launched the elusive experimental electronic/industrial producer into full rock star mode. Heaven prioritized pop hooks and big guitar solos, while embracing glam and psych aesthetics, opening up new possibilities for Tumor as a vocalist and a performer. Not necessarily an artist who keeps to one, definitive style for too long, their latest project, The Asymptotical World EP, suggests that Tumor has more to explore in this territory.
Arriving with only a day’s forewarning, The Asymptotical World was announced via a music video for the album’s sole single (and opening track) “Jackie,” with the 6-song EP manifesting across the Internet and streaming services 24 hours later. “Jackie” essentially picks up right where Tumor left off on Heaven to a Tortured Mind, asserting themself once again as glam deity, riding fuzzed out guitar riffs with snarling confidence and a melodic drawl of surprising range. Something of a post-break up depression anthem, “Jackie”’s music video sets the action in a dystopian sci-fi landscape that might be at home as the artwork for some forgotten prog album, by way of Melancholia. If not just a cool aesthetic, this video manages to get at the project enacted on both Heaven and this new EP; locating the intersections and overlaps between a particular era of American rock music, and then blurring the distinction between them. “Crushed Velvet” (track 2) continues down the same path “Jackie” set out on, bringing in Prince-type funk in homage to the fabric for which the song is named, before switching up into drawn out post-punk jam “Secrecy Is Incredibly Important to the Both of Them.” From there, The Asymptotical World diverges into “Tuck,” a collaboration with performance art/noise duo NAKED, followed then the shoegazey “…And Loyalty Is a Nuisance Child,” change ups that lead into one another organically, confidently following an internal logic. As such, The Asymptotical World works nicely as a sort of addendum to Heaven to a Tortured Mind, offering 6 tracks of comparable quality that stretches that album’s sound in some new directions without surpassing it.
Published as part of Album Roundup — July 2021 | Part 4.
