Yat-Kha - Yat Kha - We Will Never Die (The Lollipoppe Shoppe, 2021)

CD and LP have 9 tracks, including "Solitude" by Black Sabbath and "While My Guitar Gently Wheeps" by George Harrison, which are not available digitally through our Bandcamp site.

We Will Never Die is Yat-Kha's eight studio album. Centred around the huge voice of charismatic singer Albert Kuvezin from the remote Russian republic of Tuva (latitude: London, longitude: Bangladesh), the group’s long international career started out during the collapse of the USSR in 1991 with the release of “Antropofagia” on celebrated writer & art critic Artemy Troitsky’s General Records (Moscow). The release of the legendary “Yenisei-Punk” album recorded for Global Music Centre (Helsinki) in 1994 saw them gain worldwide recognition. Under the management of then bassist Lu Edmonds (3Mustapha3, Mekons, The Damned, PiL etc.), Yat-Kha signed to Paddy Moloney’s Wicklow Records (BMG Classics) and performed at all major music festivals in Europe, North America and the Far East. Kuvezin's ultra-low variant of Tuvan throat singing, the kargyraa or kanzat stayle, still remains the unique feature of Yat-Kha's mixture of traditional music and experimental roots rock and whereas there are many great khoomeiji singers this style is unique to Yat-Kha.

Recorded after the 2019 European tour, the album We Will Never Die was recorded in Southern Germany in the studios of German krautrock legends Hans-Joachim Irmler and in some ways follows Kuvezin's Poet and Lighthouses album which itself was recorded on the remote Scottish whisky island of Jura by British producer Giles Perring, reaching number One of the World Music Charts in 2010.

On this new album Kuvezin is accompanied by his long-term Tuvan friend and musical accomplice, Sholban Mongush on igil (a bowed horsehair 2-string cello) and backing vocals. Due to the usual pandemic and travel bans, some additional tracks were later recorded by Kuvezin in Abakan, Khakassia in spring 2020. Besides original compositions, the album features words gathered from the sayings and incantations of Tuvan shamans - whose traditions form an unbroken lineage dating back to the neolithic period - as well as Black Sabbath's Solitude and While My Guitar Gently Weeps (George Harrison), two songs sometimes played as an encore on live shows.

The Lollipoppe Shoppe is extremely proud to continue their involvement with this extraordinary band who in many ways blazed a trail since the early 1990s many new and interesting emerging East Asian rock music artists and experimenters for example the Mongolian metal-rock band “The Hu”.

We hope you will enjoy it as much as Yat-Kha had in making it! 
credits

Credits:
Albert Kuvezin: guitars, percussion, khomuz, vocals
Sholban Mongush: igil, backing vocals

A few words on our new album...

Sholban Mongush and me began recordings on our new album in Scheer, South Germany, after European tour in 2019. It is former industrial complex in a lovely place right by the Danube not far from the place where the river begins. The Faust studio is run by Joachim from the German cult band Faust. We spent there there days and recorded five songs.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic all our concerts, festivals and tours were cancelled and during spring 2020 we all were under quarantine. I decided not to waste time and recorded more tracks just by myself overdubbing instruments. In March we will be on tour in Russia and see how our new material works live with a full band.

I have always been interested in shamanistic mythology and poetry, especially Tuvan ones.

I very much appreciate and respect Mongush Borakhoevitch Kenin-Lopsan for his great work and years of researching and saving Tuvan shamanism. The lyrics for Sharylaam and We Will Never Die I took from his book on Tuvan Shamans.

Along with Tuvan traditional music and nature, poetry is my other inspiration. A few year back I wrote a song on the lyrics of the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, who is one of the main figures of what we call in Russian “Silver Century Poetry”. Repressions is one of the many tragedies of the Soviet Union in the 20th century, and Mandelstam has died in a Gulag camp in Vladivostok in 1938. 2021 is Mandelstam's 130th birthday.

I would like to remark on another song On The Path (to Eternal Tengri/ Na Trope) which I wrote in 1989 in Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg now again). During that time I was interested in Eastern philosophy and esoteric. I was young and my lyrics were so naïve but I sincerely survived the losses of my relatives and friends and believed in eternity and the otherworld.

Besides composing songs, I just love to play the guitar and sometimes come up with instrumental pieces like Ak-Oruk (White Road). In Tuvan traditions 'White Road' is a greeting and means good open road or way. Let me wish you all, friends and fans, journalists and music people Ak-Oruk for your life!