AKP Recordings announces Sky Time, stunning ambient jazz LP from YAI, duo of David Lackner and John Thayer

NYC dream jazz duo YAI (rhymes with "sky") weave a mesmerizing tapestry of woodwinds, waves, and ethereal echo. Sky Time is a very compelling listen, definitely recommended for fans of Jon Hassell or Sakamoto. ARP is also a significant touchpoint, as both David Lackner and John Thayer have played on ARP's recordings since Zebra, with Thayer recording, mixing and occasionally co-producing. Additionally, they recently collaborated on Ezra Feinberg's Soft Power, which Thayer also recorded, mixed, and produced.

The cover art is by incredible Japanese textile artist Shigeki Fukumoto and just couldn't better fit the vibe of this record.

These two players have both done a ton of amazing work. Lackner has released seven solo albums, scored multiple films, and worked with a wide range of artists like Fielded, Makoto Kawabata, Lydia Lunch and many others. Thayer's work has appeared in a number of films and television shows and he's worked with Zeena Parkins, Daniel Carter, Brian Chase, and many more.

ABOUT THE ALBUM

YAI is a duo consisting of kindred spirits David Lackner and John Thayer.

Lackner is a composer and multi-instrumentalist (saxophone, piano, flute, E.W.I., synthesizers) specializing in jazz, minimalism, and pop music. In 2008, he founded his record label and project studio, Galtta, as a vehicle for producing, film scoring, and releasing music of various like-minded artists. Having studied under LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela, his compositions contain a myriad wonderful marks of their influence. Thayer is an audio engineer and multi-instrumentalist (chiefly drums and percussion) whose experiential compositions are inspired by a deep attention to the sounds of the natural world. His recordings, centered around a hybrid of studio techniques and improvisatory performance, range from long-form, multilayered ambience to polyrhythmic electro-acoustic collage. Having been a very active member of the New York experimental scene, his compositions and installations bear wide-ranged influences drawn from his many collaborators over the years. The duo describes the fruits of their collaboration as “laptop jazz” and are ready to offer their second full-length effort, Sky Time, to the world.

The striking cover image, created by Japanese artist Shigeki Fukumoto, was selected with care by Lackner and Thayer. Fukomoto has been quoted as saying that when he begins a project, he has no expectations of where the process will lead him, no specific hopes of what the end product will be. He says, “The absence of a plan may seem odd to people, but I believe that heightened sensitivity can lead us into a world of new aesthetic experience.” The statement resonates with the duo, who approach their endeavors in much the same way.

While YAI’s first album, Flowers From Home (NNF, 2022,) was a very “off-world” effort infused with cool, dreamlike energy reminiscent of science fiction—think Ursula K. Le Guin’s (literally) otherworldly works—Sky Time documents a return to our Earth’s atmosphere, welling up with humid winds and soft explosions of life-giving greenery.

The album is a joyful and clear-eyed exercise of stop motion in slow motion. “Silver Chord” is an aural glacier so delicate it catches on trees as it slides down the mountain, eventually half-melting into the slow slip of sap, half-evaporating into the rarified air, always reflecting the insistent and overwhelmingly golden sunset.

Altitude is a plaything in Lackner’s and Thayer’s hands, as evidenced in the title track “Sky Time.” The listener is tossed like blossoms in a warm, oceanic breeze, riding current after current in a vast, everclear sky, sights trained on nothing but the impossible island of their birth, and the endless, ever-changing sea.

The listener—that transformed and freedom-loving blossom being—reaches level ground just as their second wind erupts into being, meticulous and hovering like a hummingbird, vibrating with the immediate desire to find the shore once again. At the outset of “The Spiral,” the hummingbird—the blossoms, the listener—approaches the water, infused with bright determination, tracing the waterline with its undulating flight before erupting into the sky once more, lost in the ecstatic embrace of the atmosphere.

And then, in another gorgeous consequence of time and bodily existence that is crystallized in album closer “Tides,” the blossom being—the listener, the hummingbird—knows it is called to rest. It glides back onto the fine sands that are as much land as they are water, finding itself standing still against the lip of the ocean in the dead of night when no wind stirs. It’s only company the indiscernible, relentless rhythm of the sea, playing at the motions of time, creeping forward gently, inevitably, forever. -Jen Powers, April/May 2024

ALBUM CREDITS

All Songs written and performed by YAI
YAI is David Lackner & John Thayer
DL - EWI, Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Moog Matriarch, Lowrey Organ, Flute, Tenor Sax, Clarinet, Soprano Sax, Yamaha MOX6, Korg monologue, Juno 106
JT - Ewe, Congas, Crystal Rattle, Percussion, Programming, Elektron Digitakt, Tape Echo, Field Recordings, Moog Matriarch, Modular Synthesizer
Recorded & Mixed by John Thayer at Friendly Gain
Mastered by Josh Bonati
Artwork by Shigeki Fukumoto
Design & Layout by Francie Chang