Yerbadiablo

Jester in Brick Lane


release date: 27-08-2012
catalogue nr.: LOG015
genre: Rock

“Jester In Brick Lane” is the first album by Yerbadiablo, an Italian group which formed in 2010. It’s not easy to describe “Jester In Brick Lane”, as I believe its chameleon-like qualities place it among those albums that are hard to classify but are often styled as "eclectic". The thread spun by the 13 tracks weaves its way through a myriad of musical genres, often within the same song. The most obvious reasons for this varied expression can clearly be found in a personal need for total stylistic freedom and an innate aversion to all forms of standardization. This is linked to an even deeper reason in turn related to the very meaning of the album, and is symbolized perfectly in the figure of the jester, the eclectic and eccentric character whose presence is felt throughout the 13 tracks, culminating right at the epicenter of the album in track 7 “Magic Jester's Box”. Sound effects, laughing, talking voices, gags, weird or out-of-tune instruments have been included with the jester in mind and have also been attributed to him. The jester unsettles, provokes and hypnotizes the listener, he probes the depths of his or her soul and shakes the foundations of their emotions and darkest fears. The general theme centers on modern Man’s arrogance towards natural and spiritual phenomena, but also towards more material issues such as the society and economy that he claims to control. Afflicted with an incurable “superiority complex” towards everything surrounding him, and incapable of considering himself as just another living being on a par with all others, modern Man clutches on to an inordinate number of often absurd theories, generating chaos, separation and conflict. The intrinsic message of “Jester In Brick Lane” targets Man’s individuality, but also his oneness with the rest of the cosmos, to enable him to rediscover the ancestral link with the ineluctable Pachamama (Mother Earth). The objective is ultimately the reawakening of the collective conscience. To achieve this, the songs' lyrics voice the jester's mind to fiercely attack Man and, particularly, the false values that regulate human society and cause social, economic and racial inequality. The jester’s anger is merciless and knows no bounds! But such severity is not without guiding principles, and is actually the instrument the jester uses to give Man a jolt and steer him towards a change of course, to get him to turn his back on modern life and look to the past: to those ancient pagan beliefs and rituals, whereby natural phenomena are worshiped as divinities; to those remote and mysterious civilizations that were once repositories of wisdom perhaps now lost forever. Modern man’s fragility and weakness are brought pitifully to light by the jester and are testament to the involution of the human species, a process that needs to be stopped before it’s too late. The jester should thus be considered a somewhat mysterious narrator with an active though undeclared role in matters. He takes on many guises in the songs, throwing light on Man’s weakness, mocking him and meting out just punishment. He not only embodies real characters, but also judgment and divine justice, our conscience, ego, fears, our deepest emotions, as well as the phenomena of the natural world. He represents the “whole”, which is why he is associated with the Tarot’s “Fool” in the album booklet. The huge variety of themes dealt with corresponds to the array of personal sensations each requiring the most appropriate forms of expression in terms of musical genre. The jester, an immaterial quick-change artist, is the bridge between apparently distant genres and, one by one, he links together the 13 tracks with meticulous and diabolical patience, like a spider weaving a web. To define “Jester In Brick Lane” as a hard rock album would be simplistic. In fact, it dynamically alternates between Punk, Reggae, Hardcore, Rock'n'roll, Psychedelia, Noise, Funk, Tribal, Country and various sound experiments. However, aside from the music, I believe the album’s real strength lies in the issues it deals with and its symbolism. “Jester In Brick Lane” is an album of its time, a time of profound uncertainty, due to an economic global crisis, but also due to the progressive impoverishment of the collective conscience and fear of a different future. The track list was devised to create food for thought for attentive listeners and demolish their enduring false certainties. By listening to the whole album, you get a round-the-world trip through the beliefs, traditions and rituals of peoples who are apparently distant from one another, although all are part of the same planet Earth, where boundaries are a mere human convention that enables the tyrannical to get rich at the expense of the weak.



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TRACKLIST

01. Punk In-Fusion
02. Winston Smith & The Street Dogs
03. Brick Lane
04. Back To The Monkey
05. Z' étoile
06. Panamerika
07. Magic Jester's Box
08. Sulphurea
09. Guilty Blues
10. Bad Days Good Waves
11. Towards Winay Marka
12. Niebla
13. Yerbadiablo