We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

World Behind Curtains

by Yair Yona

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD  or more

     

  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 5 Yair Yona releases available on Bandcamp and save 10%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Sword | חרב, Rivers Gone Badly Wrong, World Behind Curtains, Remember, and Official Bootleg #2. , and , .

    Purchasable with gift card

      $13.50 USD or more (10% OFF)

     

  • World Behind Curtains CD
    Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    3 Panels digipack + insert

    Includes unlimited streaming of World Behind Curtains via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

  • World Behind Curtains LP
    Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Hand numbered ltd. edition of 300 copies

    Includes unlimited streaming of World Behind Curtains via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    Sold Out

1.
Expatriates 02:39
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Bella 04:03

about

Recommended if you like: John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Leo Kottke, American Primitive Guitar, Takoma Records.

***If you liked listening to this album, please consider sharing this page on your social network profiles, so other may enjoy listening to it as well. Thank you for your help****


“While guitarist Yair Yona was first lured into the world of acoustic fingerpicking by a Bert Jansch CD that he found in a London shop, the Takoma school is his foundation. Like Steffen Basho-Junghans, he’s embraced this fundamentally American style on its own terms, learned its language inside out, and still made music that’s true to an upbringing on the far side of the Greenwich Meridian.” – Bill Meyer, Dusted

World Behind Curtains is, in many ways, a befitting title for the exquisite second album by Israeli guitarist/composer Yair Yona. Tel Aviv is a bustling modern metropolis, but for a musician whose medium is compositional steel-string guitar steeped in a hearty influence from underground/experimental rock and jazz, that locale can feel as isolated and shrouded from the rest of the world as can be. For all of his inherent geographical challenges, Yona has managed to circumnavigate these obstacles by virtue of sheer energy, dedication to his craft, and a spouting fountainhead of creative talent - opening those curtains incrementally wider in the process. His debut, Remember, initially released by the Tel Aviv-based label Anova and reissued by Strange Attractors in 2010, was embraced early on by the grassroots underground solo guitar cognoscenti, and championed by steel string guitar and compositional hero Glenn Jones. Word rippled steadily outward, attracting the attention of Pitchfork’s The Out Door column which tagged it as one of 2010’s best, and Yona nabbed an official invite to perform and speak on a panel at the heralded Hopscotch Festival in September 2011. World Behind Curtains peels back any artificially obscuring veils to reveal an artist blossoming into a profoundly dynamic and expressive composer, with his finest and most ambitious set of tunes to date.

Anchored by chiming steel string guitar, World Behind Curtains marks the ascendance of Yair Yona from solo steel string acolyte into master arranger, pulling the post-Takoma school of playing along with him into beautifully festooned cathedrals of sound. His exuberant attack on the acoustic guitar can be aggressive and ripe with punk rock muscle, only to return with graceful and yearning fingerstyle caresses. Each of the eight compositions on World Behind Curtains sparkle with multi-instrumental color, alternating between full string arrangements, piano, horns, chimes and splashes of electric guitars. Yona’s 12-string undulates rhythmically in opener “Expatriates” as it careens into caverns of feedback, only to spill into the gently moving currents of “It’s Not the Heat (It’s the Humidity)”. A nod to one of Yair’s greatest inspirations, “This One’s For You, Glenn” harkens to Glenn Jones’ cinematic take on the solo steel string tradition, with a forward-propulsion that combusts into a furious pace tempered by the choral yearnings of horns, only to flame out with electric guitar and an abrupt gypsy-like about face. Through the densely layered prism of Yona’s musical perspective, Leo Kottke is melded with Godspeed You! Black Emperor; James Blackshaw collides with Eastern European gypsy music; Robbie Basho finds solace in the enveloping arms of 70’s AOR-style piano arrangements.

World Behind Curtains marks a turning point in Yair Yona’s development as an artist. Make no mistake, this is not a steel string guitar album; this is an instrumental record, ambitious and singular in scope. May it serenade many late-night forays into richly colored realms of self-reflection – with the drapes spread emphatically wide.

• Yair Yona has been championed by The Out Door (Pitchfork), Dusted, Raven Sings the Blues, Music Emissions, Terrascope Online, Delta-Slider, Work and Worry, Foxy Digitalis etc.
• Official invite to 2011 Hopscotch Festival; performed live on WFMU with Glenn Jones.
• Appears on the digital version of We Are All One, In the Sun alongside Meg Baird, Glenn Jones, Arborea, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Fern Knight, Helena Espvall etc
• RIYL: James Blackshaw, Glenn Jones, Robbie Basho, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Popul Vuh

credits

released February 14, 2012

All music composed by Yair Yona.
Strings and piano arrangements by Erez Kariel.
Produced by Yair Yona

Yair - All acoustic guitars, electric guitar, bass, bells, dobro, percussions.
Erez Kariel - Glockenspiel, Rhodes, Mandolin, Bouzouki, Organ.
Idit Mintzer - Trumpet, French Horn, Tuba.
Ido Azaria - Clarinet
Hen Shenhar - Violin
Yael Barolsky - Violin
Noam Haimovitz Weinschel - Viola
Yael Shapira - Cello
Shira Shaked - Piano
Tamar Yona (AKA Mom) - Piano


***Recorded by Simon Tal and Shai Solan in Anova Music Studios. Mixed and mastered by Udi Koomran in Ginger studios***

license

tags

about

Yair Yona Israel

contact / help

Contact Yair Yona

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

Yair Yona recommends:

If you like Yair Yona, you may also like: