The Swiss Cyrils, Bondi (drums, percussion and voice) and Yeterian (guitar, organ and voice), roll again to deliver on the promise of their 2018 debut 'Certain Ruines' and thrilling live shows. The assembled elements are discernible again (if a little cleaner) and, occasional echo and plate reverb scattering aside, untreated. The vocals (a declamatory, oratorial lead with harmony and chorus) are all pleasing in their texture and placement on and
against the rhythms and progressively righteous in their rhetorical thrust (this based on a written translation of the lyric rather than live interpretation). The Levantine guitar and organ figures are artfully draped upon the hard logic of a through-line bass, insistent and elasticated with the the cold near-funk of Plank-produced Les Rita Mitsouko or even the pre-pomp Simple Minds of 'Empires & Dance', and Bondi's fabulously un-splashy drums and non-ornate overlay of percussion - enslaved to rhythm but rich in timbre. There is a
just-so rightness to everything, the decisions and delivery and production, that probably sounds arid on the page - and it is undeniably grounded in control, craft and facility - but the sum is alive with a wilful wit and a broad, wanton wisdom - intoxicated by a fanned-out sense of pop possibility that one might expect from the founder of the great globe-trawling label Les Disques Joe and a leader of the Insub Meta Orchestra.
