Influences on Yves Jarvis’s upcoming album Sundry Rock Song Stock include Miles Davis, Italian avant-pop composer Franco Battiato, and Dutch post-punk band The Ex, who fuse radical politics with melodic, body-moving grooves. Jarvis may be less direct in his lyrics, but makes his feelings implicit through the use of vivid metaphors. Recording vocals in a free-associative, phonetic stream of consciousness that he compares to Lil Wayne, Jarvis says the meanings behind his songs are revealed when a poetic turn of phrase tumbles off his tongue.
Jealousy and judgmental behaviour earn his ire on his new single “Semula”, with its exhausted opening lines: “It’s your aim to shame me / just please spare me your sanctimony.” “Roots can be particularly difficult to untangle,” Jarvis says of the song. Watch its new music video HERE.
“For a self-described “vitriolic mass of dynamite just bound to ignite,” the composure that Yves Jarvis maintains on “Victim” is stunning. It’s a carefully-packaged punch in the gut.” – The Fader on “Victim”
“An enthralling and surprising listen … coming from the same Afro-futuristic camp as Thundercat and Kendrick Lamar.” – Under the Radar
As a pre-teen street corner busker, some of Jarvis’s earliest performances took place outside. He returned to an open-air environment for his new album Sundry Rock Song Stock’s creation, setting up a makeshift studio to lay down its foundation of guitar, Nord synth, and Rhodes electric piano. Recording on a reel-to-reel tape machine, he experimented with various off-kilter techniques including a softly tapped steel drum drenched in effects, or melodies played on a wine glass meant to mimic a flute.
“I want my recordings to be naturalist, so from that sense I am ideally making them outside,” says Jarvis. “More than a musician or a singer, I’m a producer, and any studio I’m in will become my bedroom. Creation is my life and I don’t compartmentalize it at all.”
Resuming the practice of color theory that informed his 2017 album Good Will Come To You (morning yellow optimism) and 2019’s The Same But By Different Means (midnight blue contemplation), Sundry Rock Song Stock is infused with the natural state of green. As Jarvis explains, it’s the color he most closely connects to his personality, moving beyond an aesthetic attraction into feelings of wildness, boundless energy, and an anti-establishment streak permeating his 23 years on the planet.
“When you better yourself, you better the world,” Jarvis concludes. “Even if you only interact with one person in your life, the effect of trying to see things for what they are is vast. Change can feel like a fantasy, but I’m not fatalistic about it. I make music because I get results that way. It’s why I promote creativity, whatever that means for anyone.”
YVES JARVIS
Pre-Order ‘Sundry Rock Song Stock’
1. Epitome
2. In Every Mountain
3. For Props
4. Ambrosia
5. Emerald
6. Victim
7. Semula
8. Notch In Your Belt
9. Emblem
10. Fact Almighty
www.yvesjarvis.com
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