yibai - Force Quit
Genre: experimental, electronic, ambient, techno
Year: 2024
Country: Hungary
Player/Bandcamp link
Genre: experimental, electronic, ambient, techno
Year: 2024
Country: Hungary
Player/Bandcamp link
Other links
yibai
Budapest-based artist who composes and performs post-industrial and experimental ambient.
yibai100.bandcamp.com
temporary nites
۶ Budapest based advanced electronic media collective ۶ ۶ Members: temporary files / @noirnite
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Introduction
This is the first time I've tried to do an album review, so I'm not sure how it'll turn out or how much substance there will be to it. (I also just try to write a lot to improve my English, so thanks for reading my unnecessarily long strange writing if you do!) I suppose I have a hesitation when it comes to reviewing music, as it can be such an entirely subjective matter to each person. Just to my point - when I shared a song off this album which I think is stunning, one person commented about how strange he thought it was and that he thought I wasn't serious for claiming to enjoy it. And yet even though it doesn't change my opinion or the way I experience it, I can totally understand that point of view.
Anyway, the reason I decided to write about this album is because it's the first piece of music or art to give me the specific feeling that it does. I've only experienced that a couple of times, so it's special for me. Since I first started listening to this album about two months ago, I've struggled to formulate the strange feeling I get from it into words. I still won't be able to perfectly explain it here, but I wanted to give this album some attention for my first album review as I think it's quite exceptional.
Music
"Experimental ambient techno" is the technical way I can think of to describe yibai's "Force Quit." And these are all genre tags listed to describe the album on the Bandcamp page as well. Although "experimental ambient techno" is a grouping of musical genres I wouldn't have expected to be combined sincerely, somehow it's descriptive of this unique album, and yet too simplistic at the same time to describe what this album accomplishes. Classifying this album with genre labels or technical explanations seems less effective at capturing the art of this album in my opinion.
Track 1 - Brux
This is my favorite track on this album, and it's the one that gives me the most strange and powerful feeling. Throughout the song, the wind instrument in tandem with the frantic warping drum hats and the thundering bass kicks craft a beautifully intense atmosphere of something perhaps close to dread, grief, and desperation, but not quite exactly that. Then towards the end, without initially realizing it I'm carried just for a fleeting moment into a perfectly focused state where I catch a glimpse of something simply indescribable, brutally followed by a sudden heart-crushing collapse, the only thing surviving being the deep pulsating darkness of the droning bass, before even that is finally extinguished.
Track 2 - Einsamkeit
There's something that makes me feel like this track is related to the first in some non-technical way. While this track also incorporates the same wind instrument from the first to add an ethereal nature to the song's atmosphere, the difference in the beat specifically makes this track also seem quite distinct from the first, both musically and in the type of emotions I feel listening to them.
Track 3 - Wisdom Tooth Protection
A bleak melody delivered slowly by a very intense synth. Each note is followed by emptiness as it fades away, sometimes even being completely and suddenly cut off into a deafening silence, making the anticipation for the next even more suspenseful and tense. Inseparable in my opinion from the overall experience of this album, but not a complex enough track to stand alone and still make sense artistically the way I feel it can within the context of the album.
Track 4 - Diaphragmatic Breathing Exercises
"A fragmented and ghostly memory of desperate searching for something" is what I think of listening to this track.
Track 5 - Worn Down Enamel
Something feels almost sinister about this track in a way. I'm not sure if I can properly explain what aspect I'm referring to here, but there's a certain atonal (? I'm forgetting the proper word) nature to this song that begins the same time the beat drops that is intriguing to me. The atmosphere created by this song combined with the compelling beat patterns, makes this probably another of my favorite tracks off this album.
Track 6 - Ama
This track starts out as one of the most ambient on the album. There are strange sounds that happen intermittently, but only seem to form chaos. As the song continues however, the whole composition begins feeling like it's not chaos at all, but instead something alive...
Track 7 - Abrupt Clenching Tightness
The longest track on the album at over 8 minutes, this one feels the closest to a journey, and I think it's an amazing final track. Really, it feels like the final part of the grander journey; a world you've nearly reached the end of, and yet there's still a lingering apprehension alongside the bleak finality of the atmosphere.
Cover art
I realized that the visual art of this album also deserves mentioning since I think it's quite fitting for the album. But there's not much analysis or anything I can give on it other than I think it's an interesting abstract cover that goes perfectly with the atmosphere of the music. I also own the cassette for this album, and the green cassette fits nicely with the cover art, although the cassette itself has no labeling on it which might have looked better while also allowing me to know what the cassette is if I ever somehow lost the case or something.
Conclusion
In my opinion, "Force Quit" is an experimental and electronic masterpiece of an album, while also being the most unique techno music I might ever hear. However, it is immensely dark and unforgiving, never lightening up for a moment. This isn't exactly music I'd likely listen to at just any given moment I want to hear some music casually. And given its experimental and oppressive sound, it's not something that I'd recommend to everyone, as it may not be widely appreciated.
This is one of the rare pieces of music that are so uniquely impactful to me that it's nearly impossible for me to compare it to other music, even if I wanted to. And because of that, I have no idea how to go about rating it on a scale system. I will simply rate it as a different category, not necessarily higher, but separate from a "1-10" type of system, because it's incomparable.
Rating - Masterpiece
