A space with no volume. Geography with no border. A body that displaces no air. A room too large to see the far wall with the naked eye but too small to contain a single breath. Yves Tumor lives in the interstitial realities between what is known, what can be felt, and what we feel and know too much of and is shut out completely for safety and peace of mind. Heaven to a Tortured Mind is the wayward scholar from no-where’s fourth studio album, and sees him leafing through the pages of human experience to excavate evidence for a grand theory of everything, except for how to keep a leash on his own tempestuous mind. The album emerges from the mirage of time and sound with the neo-soul, cloud-hopping, sexy-sainthood slayer “Gospel for a New Century,” which captures of the warm exuberance one might feel from watching a hypothetical, VHS homemovie of Thundercat giving a pint-sized Nik Hakim a piggy-back-ride. This laid back, noisy psychedelic-marbled-R’nB is examined in new exciting forms on the shadow-dwelling crawl and mole-man funk of “Strawberry Privilege” as well as the clattering, day-dream drill “Identity Trade” which embodies a pandemonium of jazz grooves fighting through a furrow of discord to breach the surface for a chance at a breath of fresh air, including a particularly spunky and inspiring clarinet solo. Things really come together on “Kerosene!” though, where Yves Tumor and Diana Gordon duet, their voices gliding around each other and intertwining like snakes in oil, with Gordon doing her best Dolores O’Riordan impression through the swaying storm of hot desire and spaceship funk blasting star-dust exhaust all over the night sky. Your mind does not need to be troubled to find the glimmers of heaven nestled throughout this release.
Grab a copy of Heaven to a Tortured Mind from Warp Records here.
