YELKA - Krieg & Ferien

An expressionist poem from 1911 at the head of a pressre-lease in 2023? Did some ChatGPT make that up? Hardly. Jakob van Hoddis' poetry moved YELKA guitarist Daniel Meteo a lot as a young person and came to mind during the recording of "Krieg & Ferien", that briefly translates into “War & Ease”, the third YELKA album this year. And so the poem became the title for the ten-minute closing piece: an improvised one-take funk jam with an uncertain outcome. YELKA's new album may have so much in common with Tol-stoy's novel "War & Peace", to which the album title quite obviously alludes, that it was created in a time in which we all-forwell-known reasons – have to deal with Russian society more than we have in a long time. But the Berlin trio-be-sides Meteo it's Christian Obermaier on drums and Yelka Wehmeier on bass and vocals- was more concerned with other questions in the reflection of pop music: Is this lived es-capism (i.e. ease?) or subculture, i.e. is the fight against mainstream declared here (i.e. war)? Or does one only condition the other? Does subculture in the end also only offer ease from the mainstream? Or does it automatically become mainstream in case of success?

Of course, it remains appealing to read the title literally. Who doesn't go on a well-deserved vacation this year, while in the background the latest tank deliveries to Ukraine are being processed? Who doesn't know them, the vacation photos with burning forests in the background. Isn't nature also in a kind of state of war right now?

YELKA, who actually only found each other as a band during the Corona pandemic, remain true to their "10 albums in 3 years" master plan against all odds. Sure, so do Volkswagen and the ECB: growth forever! But with YELKA we're only talking about limited 300 vinyl editions for now. 

As with the previous albums "Now here Jive" & "1976" the latest album was again recorded in Berlin Popschutz and the music was mixed and mastered by Norman Nietzsche. The cover drawing by Chriegl Farner is certainly the most striking motif of the YELKA albums released so far.

In general, one has the feeling that this trio has now really come together. "Can I use your name!? Can I use your dream?!", YELKA are asking in the album opener, reminding of Au Pairs or SLITS with the stoic beat, the dub remix compatible bass line and its no-wave guitars. Through various in-terlude wormholes we suddenly land in a post-kraut cover version of "Tausendmal Du"-originally by Münchener Freiheit! A song, however, that fits amazingly well into the YELKA repertoire between Chicago-Postrock, Ruhrpott-Kraut and Berlin electronic school.

But let's return to Jakob Van Hoddis 'World's End poem: Even today, literary scholars debate how humoristically the poem should be read, or to what extent van Hoddis has pro-cessed the fears of technical progress of the time in hiseight lines. As far as the extreme weather situations in the summer vacations of 2023 are concerned, the text., more than 100 years later, seems rather prophetic. Worryingly prophetic.

TRACKLISTING
A1. Krieg & Ferien
A2. Interlude #4
A3. Beo
A4. Interlude #5
A5. Beach Come
B1. Tausendmal Du
B2. Weitende

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