"Psychic Sounds welcomes the premiere publication of Chilean based musician, and animator Anibal Bley’s debut as Lavina Yelb. Originally released as a digital download in 2010, ‘Apapneas Hypmne Somome’ has finally found its way to physical media to bump & bounce in decks directly to your dome. ”Lavina Yelb’s world is inhabited by 8-bit characters, self-flapping blankets that shape-shift into and out of a plethora of cartoon morphologies and stroboscopic blocks and lines of color. Cheap keyboards and sounds from everyday life are pushed in creative loops and turns, into songs that are daring, bizarre, cute, sometimes harsh, mostly accessible and above all, playful,” originally observed by fellow regional sound explorers, Nonlocal Society.
Hallucinatory animations, like the recent ‘Royal Flush’ contribution (audio by Charmaine Lee & Ikue Mori), illuminate the visual extension that often accompany Lavina Yelb’s music which both expand & complement the sonic universe created in the form of gifs, music videos, digital illustrations, album covers and materially: paintings and installations. “All over his oeuvre deconstructive strategies are applied, accidents & deformations are accentuated and used to arrive at unexpected results. The unfinished is made to serve as an opening for the imagining; ambiguities are exalted and words are shuffled out of their meanings,” Nonlocal further notes.
Bley’s long running parallel independent universe as Lavina Yelb sprawls through micro to macro cross sections further expanding the wavy imaginary sphere of perplexing, tensible hybrid genre experiments, both curiously dystopic & utopic, as explored through these twelve tracks of trance-infused melodic deliriums. Reflecting real life humid freedoms & fears viewed through the shimmer of sun-dappled coastal urban hometown terrains that Valparaíso is known for, we wade through sequences of oceanic cliff drip drops, feral dogs barking, corroded pipes flush into the city’s abyss , street violence lament channelled by babies cry, cartoonish machismo grunts giveaway into perplexing pulses, exotic birds caw into the chaos of community markets which all weave flawlessly into restrained compositions, but equally visualized deep into rhythmic voyages which vibe this super weird atmospheric play through welcoming, but previously unknown, atmospheres informing a minimalist vibe which has laid the groundwork into the current band’s fully realized frenetic maximalist potencies well over the last decade.
After our 2023 tour in Chile, we landed back in Santiago, and I saw the Lavina Yelb band in a large raw warehouse during a weekend of wandering through the Persa Bio Bio marketplace, known for it’s wild energy, weird finds, and unusual offerings. I had come to know & love ‘Apapneas Hypmne Somome‘ before these travels, and was finally present to experience the new evolution….. it’s exciting to hear this early vision reconstituted, freshly revisited, and to have witnessed it’s trajectory turn into the full-blown shredding band it is now! If you get to see them live, it'll definitely be one of most exhilarating acts you could ever see. This debut album is an essential, inspiring, and supreme jumpstart into new dimensions. This is truly what dreams are made of, and I’m thankful to finally have this in hand." - Corum
