Yves Tumor has released their new album Heaven To A Tortured Mind. Composed, producer and written by Tumor, with additional production Justin Raisen, this album is special. Yves Tumor became a darling of the experimental scene following 2016’s Serpent Music, merging noise, industrial sounds and grinding electronics with ambient electronica. They all merged into one strange and at times terrifying mix of sounds that somehow worked together. This album may seem like a wide turn away from just a few years ago, but there have been signs they were looking to ascend into offbeat rock stardom. Everything around Safe in the Hands of Love, from the tour to look to the intermittently changing sound lent to something more organic and bombastic.
Heaven To A Tortured Mind completes that transition for an artist who seems to always look towards something new. This no longer has the grating industrial sounds of their early work, but rather fuzzy and booming guitars, with vocals that change between soft whispering to yelling.
This is at its core a rock album, but with a rawness you don’t see anywhere mainstream alternative radio. There are long periods of just instrumentals like on “Asteroid Blues” or songs mixing together such as the double single “Romanticist” into “Dream Palette” that sounds like part one of a song into part two.
Heaven To A Tortured Mind announces itself as something quite different on the opener “Gospel For A New Century” with the horns and funky drums that feel like Run The Jewels could have added their own bombast to. Tumor brings a rock / pop/ soul swagger to the record that makes all of this possible.
Songs flow effortlessly from one to the next with pacing that doesn’t lean towards any part of the album. Heaven Of A Tortured Mind eventually calms itself down from the towering heights of the first few songs towards the end with the relaxed “Strawberry Privilege,” the instrumental and experimental “Asteroid Blues” and eventually the soulful R&B influenced “A Greater Love.”
Yves Tumor bridges the gap between psych rock and his past experimental and industrial tendencies with this album. There are the occasional walls of sound with some more subdued, soulful and funky sections. It is a great week for music and this album could be the cream of the crop.
Listen to the album and pick up your copy via Warp Records here.
