Album Review: Name of Kings, Yurt
Posted in Reviews on June 20th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
There is a striking amount of detail put into Name of Kings‘ ostensible debut, Yurt. Comprised of Bohemond Pasha (vocals, acoustic guitar, percussion) and Malid Majnun (acoustic and electric guitar, bass, keys, percussion, oud, barbat, ocarina, arrangements for strings and horns on “Rumi” and “By Design”), the band reportedly began in Prague in the 1990s and now reside in Bucharest, Romania, and their sound is informed by folk music as well as psychedelia, soul, funk, classic rock and more besides. Yurt is their first listed album, though I couldn’t say for sure they never had anything else out in all that time. In any case, as Name of Kings, Pasha and Majnun offer seven songs across 30 minutes of soulful rock fusion, tapping into a classic-style spirit that’s hard to pin to a year, but that derives in part from singer-songwriters of the early 1970s, and part from its own nuance.
Throughout cuts like “Revolutions” and “Bridges” at the outset, through “Rumi” and “By Design” at the finish, Yurt is careful in the presentation of the elements that comprise it, with a deceptive mix that is as likely to leave space open for an intimate feel as to fill it with organ/keys or a vocal melody, guitars generally complementing rather than in a constant forward position. That ethic can be heard on the final strummy moments of “By Design” or in the sleek boogie of “Revolutions,” where the guitar holds a buzz in the chorus as the bass and ride cymbal dig into the same rhythm.
Funky, swirling, supremely confident in its execution, the opener unfolds as a highlight of Yurt for the fullness of its sound, but as “Bridges” finds Pasha tapping into The Temptations for vocal influence over the initial soft guitar, which turns moodier and almost grunge-esque at the end of the verse measures, drums far back as flourish of keys arrives in the next verse, a stop, some string sounds, plenty of room for all in the sound and vocal harmonies besides. “Bridges” remains low key in terms of volume — that is, it never explodes — but it creates a surprisingly vast atmosphere in just under four minutes, with the space between the organ and guitar, guitar and drums, vocals in the forefront able to be the element carrying the song with the instruments in something of a supporting role.
This happens again in the early going of “By Design,” and the build-up in “Motion and Fame,” but the album is able to account for that after the psych-funk of “Revolutions” and amid the smooth bassy and organ-ic beginning of “Too Long Together,” wherein the drums work at a slow strut behind a harmonized verse, the melody of the organ filling out the space that “Night Errant,” with its Paul Simon meeting Jimmy Page “Me and Julio Going to California” acoustic figure and a call and response between the guitar and bass in the post-chorus stop, left to more experimentalist-feeling noises and low end pulsating. In this way the songs build on each other to create a portrait of the album as a single work — not a single song, but a single collection of them. One part of one song answers another, the record in conversation with itself as with folk, psych, funk, soul, rock traditions, and Yurt becomes a story as much about the band itself as any particular narrative being conveyed in the material.
“Too Long Together” crashes in as a relatively lush centerpiece, but its flow is gentle, easygoing, and leaves space for the vocal melody. A line of organ runs through the verse and chorus, an especially distinguished guitar solo appears later, full-on mellow ’70s rock given progressive quirk in its organ-and-background-noise finish. The subsequent “Motion and Fame” is the longest piece at 7:25 and starts with sampled speech, maybe backward, and subtly-fading-in acoustic guitar that comes forward for the first verse after a minute in, organ joining to underscore the feel of revelation, almost something Lynyrd Skynyrd might’ve done. Arda Algul (who also mixed “Motion of Fame” and several other tracks; the rest were done by Majnun and Pasha) adds an organ solo after the guitar solo in the song’s second half, and Mihai Ionita guests on harmony guitar, before the song returns in a drop to the speech and ambient guitar to close out, experimental and folkish both. This brings about the distorted riff that builds up at the start of “Rumi,” which along with “By Design” after, make up the closing salvo and the album’s two shortest pieces. Horns flash and the organ takes advantage of the misdirection to be a little playful in the verse, but the second chorus is a rallying cry for every instrument that’s gone wandering and all solidifies around the hook twice, at which point the organ leads into the fade.
And “By Design” is only 2:46, but its acoustic-and-strings presentation — strings and horns are both credited to Kolin Philharmonic Orchestra — is emotionally evocative and though lucid instrumentally hints in its final minute vocally toward a psychedelic lean, the last lines of the album sweeping up from deep in the mix in a kind of doppler effect as they pass by. Considering the significant amount of stylistic ground covered, they cap Yurt with relatively little ceremony, making it a short record but a full-length nonetheless in its fluidity and seeming intention. In arrangement and in the crafting of the melodies throughout, Name of Kings are distinct in their influence from ’70s soul and rock, not necessarily vintage in their delivery or production, but evidently conscious of using the mix as an instrument in itself, and able to dwell in spaces for a short time without giving up the (soft) momentum of one song into the next.
Yurt is not beholden to heavy in the traditional sense of its tones, but it works in part from heavy inspirations, and the atmosphere the album creates is vibrant enough to have a presence of its own in the room. If this in fact is their debut, it is all the more a striking stylistic amalgam, and if it’s taken them a few decades or so to get to this point, their time would seem not to have been misspent. Not going to be for everybody, but will hit hard and stay with others to the point where they wonder why everyone else isn’t as on board.
