REVIEW: Big Yawn - South Preston Garage
Big Yawn produce music with an anarchic and invigorating edge…
Surely you know that intermittent feeling of being a bit underwhelmed by life? When things stagnate and you get an acute grasp on what personal inertia means? (COVID check!) And just when you really want to lean into the melancholy you find an email in your junk folder about a band you are not familiar with who did a recording in a South Preston garage. You listen, you love, you’re revived - and just like that you are back on a road to recovery. Life hey. So, Big Yawn… they are a Melbourne four-piece whose music is a hella loose and exciting monster made for listening to while smoking big joints. Welcome to our review, or big fawn, of (y)our new favourite band.
I hear you ask: 'Four piece? Are they a band, or an electronic act?' Well, they have a drummer and three other members sharing sample and synth duties. YOU DECIDE. But really, who cares, it sounds fantastic: think the experimental adventurism of Battles and the melodic meanderings of Border Community artist *insert name here*. Nestled within Big Yawn is a jazz-like, semi-freeform flow which pit melody and rhythm almost combatively against each other, like each section wants to be its own identity separate from the whole. It’s not messy though, think less street and more UFC fight. It’s a very calculated chaos.
Much credit here should go to the math-rock polyrhythms of drummer Kinlay Denning. Talk about anger management; he bangs that instrument like he's trying to tame a wild beast. Processed in real-time with FX sorcery, which at points add proper drum n bass flair, the drums are the glue holding it all together (even if at times that cohesiveness feels more like a blue tack than super glue). In simpler terms, his drum kit is the easel from which the rest of the band paint.
Big Dogs aka Big Yawn
Nowhere is this more evident than 'Offshore Diamond' where samples appear and disappear like spectral entities and everything feels like it is about to unravel at any moment. In the middle of the tempest, like a lighthouse tower, is the guiding light of Denning's drumming that keeps everything from falling off the edges. What a legend. Just add steroids to that blueprint, and you get the cool-as-fuck 'British Teeth' and 'Burton Bell', both cuts growling with pumping hydraulics and eerie melodies. On the latter, especially, the flittering electronics make way to a thumping drum beat that wouldn't sit out of place in a metalcore anthem. (Appropriately, the title’s track might be an insider nod to a certain industrial metal veteran/vocalist. Or maybe not - and I need to chill on the theories).
The overall intensity is balanced out by the cool, almost leisurely feel of 'Bad Boy 4 Now'. In the band's own words it is their 'most melodic number to date'. Everything is toned down and more temperate, a change of pace allowing other elements to breathe. And the result is a chilled, tropical sound that screams: 'Hey, we're just having a casual jam. Stick around. We'll have a bbq afterwards'. The track that sounds the most straightforward (not used as a pejorative here) is 'Four Dads', which employ a metronomic rhythm and automated throbbing sub. Compared to the rest of the album, it’s almost hypnotically in lockstep with all its constituents.
No doubt the sound of Big Yawn is one of aficionados whose musical heroes must be as esoteric as they are interesting. Their heady explorations of unique scales are evident of their fascination with music. The melodies are other-worldly, and at its most fierce, the beats feel sourced from an industrial factory. At times it’s intense, other times its light, but at 100% of the time it feels cathartic, just four friends escaping reality for a bit by having a jam for no other reason than to… have a jam. Pure Flow. As great as South Preston Garage sounds at my home, I can only imagine the vibe in that South Preston garage. I can't wait to see Big Yawn live once things get bad to normal (fuck COVID).
PS. Kudos to the mixing and mastering engineers, this release sounds huge and crystalline.✌🏾
Big Yawn ‘South Preston Garage’ is out now through Research Records.