YZMUTi’s “The Space Out,” the fourth and final epic from the group’s debut album Tipota, begins with sounds like voices calling wordlessly across the water on a moonlit night. But when the beat comes in the abstraction coheres a bit and then comes into focus with the lyrics toward the first third of the more than nine minute composition. Yet there is a beautifully disorienting element that vibes with the name of the song. Swelling, textured tones bubble up, sparkling sounds hover and zip by in the soundscape as our imagined narrator wanders through a futuristic landscape with distractions from reality aplenty so that one can be spaced out to the point of a perpetual dissociative episode. The line “I overdosed on pleasantries by the age of three” and “I hope I never have to return from delirium” speaks to that state of things as a swing from becoming too readily attached to things and to people. It is exploring that spectrum in ethereal and effervescent dynamics and imaginative, poetic imagery on which this unusual and ambitious song work. We experience the intimacy of thought while taking a trip into emotional stratosphere in the melody. The lyrics talk about that process and mechanism of dissociation while coming from direct experiences that are themselves a ladder out of endless distraction through self-awareness and recognizing that process as a choice made easier by circumstance. Musically it’s reminiscent of Alice Coltrane’s more ambient, spiritual records and Stevie Wonder’s more unusual 1970s experimental records but with a modern ear for sound design. Although the song is over nine minutes long it feels like a short, colorful journey through a life in dreamlike stasis yearning to wake up into a conscious life filled with genuine joy rather than soporific bliss. Listen to “The Space Out” on Soundcloud.
Queen City Sounds and Art 