For Tel Aviv-based Raw Tapes artist Yummi Wisler, playing guitar has always meant freedom — from expectations, from doubts, from the banality of the real world. Wisler grew up adoring blues icons, such as Charley Patton or John Lee Hooker — at a time when everything on the radio was ruled by synthesizers. In the early 2000’s, hungry for something more organic and raw, Wisler formed Habiluim — a fiery, cabaret-influenced political punk polka band that galvanized young people during their three-album streak. Since then, Wisler has been creating in various media – writing plays, directing radical TV shows, lecturing about cinema and music, and playing the guitar. For his latest creation, Wisler joined the roster of Raw Tapes sonic explorers to build something new and undefinable — the Yummi Wisler Guitar Combo’s experimental LP, The Albanian Connection.
After years of writing political punk songs, the most vulnerable Wisler felt he could do was abandon words altogether. “It felt like there was nothing more to say with lyrics,” he says. “Instrumental music was the way to go, and being a lousy jazz player as I am — I realized I needed to invent my own genre to be good at it.” Along with drummer Amir Bresler and bassist Gilad Abro, Wisler created his Yummi Wisler Guitar Combo — and the trio’s Raw Tapes debut, The Albanian Connection, is 11 tracks of new-but-nostalgic Mediterranean boogie-woogie. Taking cues from Spaghetti western soundtracks, psychedelia, Gershwin ballads, surf rock and film noir, the music seems to grin right at you. The combo recorded fast and furious — each song on The Albanian Connection is a first full take to “give the sense that they might fall apart at any minute,” says Yummi. They don’t, but the feeling of risk creeps through. “You could say this album is an attempt to make party music dangerous again, like it originally was when played before human sacrifices and circumcisions.”
Recommended: Track 2, “Albanian Shuffle,” Track 6, “The Lonesome Death of Sylvia Bumper,” Track 1, “Baggage Claim”
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Label: Raw Tapes
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