I love my yucca palm, from its fibrous stem to its rough leaves. And yet, my houseplant has been an enigma since I purchased it in the supermarket two years ago. The last time I watered it was two months ago – and my yucca has beengetting greener ever since. The eponymous mini-album by synth-cultivator Church Andrews and rhythm-gardener Matt Davies is similarly idiosyncratic. Compositionally, »Yucca« consists in a reduced, fine-limbed duet of electronic sounds and drums. The duo incessantly makes use of unusual measures, polyrhythms, and tempo changes. This makes the album both technical and incalculable. It’s unapologetically nerdy: Sometimes Andrews and Davies quote Hip-Hop, sometimes they borrow from minimal music. Sometimes they transcribe the Fibonacci-sequence, a sequence of natural numbers that can be used to describe rates of growth in nature (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, …), into a rhythm. Sound complicated, in every sense of the phrase. Yet, by limiting themselves to two instruments and short runtimes, the compositions of Andrews and Davies never feel overfraught. »Yucca« celebrates the joy of learning playfully. Like my houseplant, it hasn’t fully flourish yet. Their short developments of motifs are a bit erratic still. That being said, »Yucca« is a lot of fun. Unlike me, Andrews and Davies possess a couple of green thumbs.
Rafael Toral
Spectral Evolution
Moikai