Yves Tumor
Serpent Music
Release Date: Sep 30, 2016
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Pan
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Album Review: Serpent Music by Yves Tumor
Great, Based on 5 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
“I’m never consciously trying to make a harsh song, or a dreamy song, or a noisy, disgusting song — it’s more a mood I want to translate.”– Yves Tumor, in an interview with Dazed On Serpent Music, his new album as Yves Tumor, Sean Bowie arrives at the personal at an angle. Rather than countenancing the self as a coherent, contained whole, Serpent Music posits it as a combination of discontinuous objects, styles, gestures, and moods — capacious and unbound, fleeting and fraught. More than previous album When Man Fails You, Serpent Music goes some way to agglomerate Bowie’s pseudonymous work as Bekelé Berhanu, Teams, and Silkbless (among others), while also adding new sounds and shapes to his oeuvre.
Based on rating 3.7/5
Like the biblical animal it's named after, Serpent Music speaks with a forked tongue. At first it seems harmless; only later do you realise what you've gotten into. It's no surprise that Rahel Ali's PAN debut is such a slippery animal. His music has always been hard to pin down, first as TEAMS and then, under other aliases, releasing on labels like Janus and NON.
Based on rating 7.3/10
Yves Tumor is an associate of Mykki Blanco and was a key player on last year’s C-ORE compilation. He’s also blipped up on comps from buzzworthy labels like NON and UNO and had Hippos in Tanks’ founder Barron Machat not passed away, Tumor would have been a ready-fit for that groundbreaking label, too. As it stands, Yves Tumor shares many sonic traits with the likes of HiT artists like James Ferraro and Dean Blunt.
Opinion: Excellent
Yves Tumor — Serpent Music (PAN)There is a certain elusiveness to Yves Tumor that transcends his music. The name is, of course, a pseudonym, and whilst Tumor (real name Rahel Ali) was raised in Tennessee, he now resides in Turin of all places, after many years wandering the globe in pursuit of a restless muse. A protégé of avant-garde queer rap star Mykki Bianco, Tumor’s influences are much more eclectic, and he cites Nirvana, Slayer, The Velvet Underground and Throbbing Gristle as key road signs in his musical development.
Opinion: Very Good
Referring to himself as a 'social butterfly', in a conversation with Dazed, Yves Tumor is an artist fully comfortable with adaption. The musician - originally stemming from Tennessee - left home at 20 and has avoided stagnation ever since. The restless artist has a history of travelling; be it through location, genre or label. His latest - Serpent Music - was Recorded between Miami, Leipzig, Los Angeles and Berlin.
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