a gentle push towards chaos...
author: Dave X, ITDE
With his debut album, Yeager doesn't knock one out of the park, he tucks it into his pocket and smuggles it home by walking through the subway tunnels. The minimal cover art should have given it away-- this isn't brash compu-math-rock, it's more of a gentle push towards chaos from a benign virus. One track really moves into the next, so much so that no titles are given-- indeed, this might be one piece of music. It's one of those "who-knows, who-cares" situations that nice music often inspires.
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Meditative, but often in a mildly jarring way...
author: Jon Worley, Aiding & Abetting
If album titles could be recognized for truth in advertising, this one would win the grand prize. Ian Yeager plays his guitar and then manipulates those pieces through a computer. Meditative, but often in a mildly jarring way. Without the computer "accompaniment," the pieces would be a bit dull for my taste. The electronic scrambling makes me smile.
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Intriguing (and a bit peculiar), to say the least...
author: RKF, Dead Angel zine
The disc is exactly what the title suggests: Fourteen tracks of music composed and recorded using only guitar and computer. The packaging is quite minimalist and Yeager doesn't appear to have bothered with actual titles, which is kind of interesting. The tracks themselves are a series of minimalist compositions featuring plucked guitar and broken, stuttering, looped computer sounds to provide counterpoint in both melody and rhythm. The result is frequently a disorienting collision between melodic, man-made sound and cold digital robotics. The only real difference in the individual tracks is the choice of notes and rhythmic patterns, and the different points at which the computer noises burst to the fore; in that sense, it might make more sense to think of this disc as one long idea broken up into fourteen individual movements. No matter how you think of it, the sound is unusual, a mating of past and present approaches to sound that reach for the outer limits of experimental music. This is not so much "music" in the accepted sense as a catalog of possibilities in the juxtaposition of wildly different instruments. Intriguing (and a bit peculiar), to say the least.
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Most pieces are of a pretentiousless simplicity that make this one a nice ambien
author: Dolf Mulder, Vital Weekly
For his debute release Ian Yeager choose a title that clearly and simply states what it has to offer: music for guitar plus computer. Yeager works in the Bay Area as a composer and performer. As an improvisor he played with many musicians including Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Bob Marsh, Joseph Zitt, Rent Romus, Phillip Everett, a.o. That's about all I can tell about his whereabouts. On his solo-release Yeager shows another side of his musical identity. He offers a very ambient-like music. Friendly and gentle guitar melodies and riffs prevail. The computer is used in a more additional sense. Let this be my first compliment to Yeager, because
the use of a computer often leads to meaningless complexity. As far as I can judge about it, I have the feeling Yeager uses only a limited range of computertechniques in order to give the pieces the finishing touch. Often he seems to seek a cascading effect. Most pieces are of a pretentiousless simplicity that make this one a nice ambient - absolutely non new age - cd.
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