YUM YUM Dan Loves Patti 1996

Discogs

Artist Biography from All Music 

Chicago, Illinois, USA-based art-rock group Yum-Yum is essentially the work of one man, Chris Holmes (c.1971, Chicago, Illinois, USA). Holmes is responsible for writing all of the group’s songs, and also for co-production, singing, guitar and keyboards, working alongside a constantly revolving team of sympathetic musicians and collaborators. What immediately captured critical interest about Yum-Yum’s debut album, 1996’s Dan Loves Patti, was the unusual instrumentation. Arranged by Holmes himself, the record incorporated string, horn and cello sections to animate Holmes’ dense, emotive songs. An early interview in Rolling Stone magazine drew comparisons with both the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. Another comparison was drawn with the Moody Blues - Holmes admitting to using a Chamberlin 60s keyboard to play tapes of genuine orchestral instruments in the same manner that the Moody Blues had done two decades earlier. He also employs a mellotron, formerly used by the BBC for sound effects on the science fiction television programme Doctor Who. Indeed, his interest in science fiction extends to lectures on UFOs for college radio stations, and a dissertation on alien visitations at the University of Chicago. His first band, the Hawkwind -influenced Sabalon Glitz, were named after a Doctor Who character. Holmes had by now already established a reputation as an ‘auteur’, sharing his home with the staff of the Chicago literary journal The Baffler. Yum-Yum was formed in 1992 as an alternative outlet to Sabalon Glitz (he also has a third group, the ambient house project Ashtar Command). Holmes’ contract with TAG/ Atlantic Records entitles him to release music by any of the three bands (Sabalon Glitz’s first album, Ufonic, came out in 1995). However, Holmes was forced to abandon use of the name Yum-Yum in the UK after an existing group claimed prior usage - hence Dan Loves Patti was released credited simply to Chris Holmes. 

Tracklist  

1	I'm Not Telling
2	Apiary
3	Dan Loves Patti
4	Doot-Doot
5	Train Of Thought
6	Sister
7	Cross My Heart
8	Ring
9	Jealous Of The Stars
10	Uneasy
11	Words Will Fail
12	Lament

SABALON GLITZ Ufonic 1995

by request

Discogs

Review by William Tilland

Part of the mid-'90s American post-rock scene which spawned groups like Tortoise, Jessamine, and Labradford, the Chicago-based Sabalon Glitz quartet creates music superficially of the shoegazer pop and jangle guitar variety, but rather than being inspired by contemporary guitar drone groups such as the British My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, or Flying Saucer Attack, Sabalon travels much further back into Kosmiche music history, paying homage to the sounds of early Popul Vuh and Pink Floyd. There's even a hidden track that reproduces a telephone interview between one of the band members and Rev. Frank Stranges, in which Stranges (an apt name) discourses on alien contact and the hollow earth theory. The twin guitars of Chris Holmes and Rob Kaeding lay down an impressive wall of guitar noise on occasion, especially on the dynamic "Superchaismic Nucleus," but the overall tendency is somewhat more laid-back. The discrete, tasteful use of a theramin and Moog synthesizer is another plus for the group, and it not only establishes the group's space music connection, but it also serves to keep them away from the predictable rut into which some of the shoegazer groups can so easily fall. 

Tracklist

1	Hammer Of The Witches	4:12
2	Time Traveller	4:07
3	The Forge Of Vulcan	2:15
4	Superchiasmic Nucleus	3:10
5	Forest	5:21
6	The Lonesome Death Of Elijah P. Woods	6:38
7	Dance Of The Firewalker	2:07
8	Ufonic	5:54