Ylajali

Personnel: Rasmus Rasmussen (guitar).
Photographer: Marie Cathrine Jorgensen.
No longer a solo alias for multi-instrumentalist and producer Jakob Skott, Syntaks officially transforms into a duo on YLAJALI. The album features the wordless, largely textural voice of new member Anna Cecilia, who appeared as a guest on 2006's AWAKES. Inspired by Knut Hamsun's 1890 novel, HUNGER, and recorded a short distance from the location where the book was written, YLAJALI--named after the mysterious woman who eludes the protagonist, a shriveling drifter--nonetheless seems more affected by its sonic touchstones: lush dream pop and wistful IDM. It's a remarkable progression from the inert clunkiness that prevented AWAKES from rivaling the best of its new school of ambient dream pop class (Manual's ASCEND, Ulrich Schnauss' A STRANGELY ISOLATED PLACE). Even when it most resembles a Morr Music tribute to Harold Budd and the Cocteau Twins' THE MOON AND THE MELODIES, it is doubtlessly capable of rousing the most lapsed of shoegazers.