YANQUI U.X.O.

This double album (shortened to 77 minutes for the CD) is a huge musical accomplishment. It contains some of GYBE's most original and innovative music, in their whole catalogue. However, it is largely missing the street noises and voice-overs that characterized the first three albums (I include Zero Riot in those). This is both a curse, in that those additional tapes added a welcome emotional and political layer to their sound, and a blessing in that one can now thus really focus on the music itself. Some reviewers don't seem to like this album as much as some of the others. I think this is because of two things: a) the missing street noises and tapes, which we all had come to love, and b) the first song here, titled 09-15-00 (broken into two parts), which is quite slow and lasts 20 minutes. I can easily see someone wanting to zip through this album to provide a review, and getting bogged down in that first song, and perhaps not fully listening to the rest of the tracks. If so, this would be a shame, because the third track, Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls, and the fourth and fifth tracks (part I and II of M-F-Redeemer) are so highly original, different, and musical. There is nothing quite like them, either recorded by GYBE or any other band - they stand as testaments to the bands' significant musicality and creativity. Only a couple of pieces on LYSF match them in quality. The first song (09-15-00) is musical too, but involves the slowest and weakest tracks on the album, though I still quite like them. But one can't listen to this album just once and make up an opinion. It needs a number of full open-minded listens. For anyone who is interested in this band, I highly recommend this album. I give it 8.8 out of 10 on my 10-point scale, which places it as (high) 4 PA stars. Close to 5 Stars.

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