Preview: Yelena Eckemoff's 'Scenes from the Dark Ages'

Medieval classical-jazz prog-rock time travel, or immersion therapy for musicians in need of a cleansing, creative fix

“White Castle,” art by Yelena Eckemoff

“Yelena’s writing recalls the progressive rock of the 1970s, but with distinctive characteristics of its own, which comes from her poetical approach. It’s very dense music, mostly written, even if there are some improvisational sections. It’s also very well organized, and within this organization, everyone found their own space. In addition to the ancient and the modern, there is a somewhat mystical atmosphere to it.” — Eloisa Manera, violin | liner notes by Suzanne Lorge

The first few listens of Yelena Eckemoff’s Scenes from the Dark Ages feels very much like you’re walking over a constantly shifting field of wildflowers, grass, dirt, with insects and worms attached at the roots, magma, and the stuff of stardust…all through the ages — an almost spiraling, musical version of time travel that sends you hurtling simultaneously to June 16-18, 2023, where the six-piece band is laying down tracks in Mantua, Italy’s Digitube Studio, to Eckemoff’s childhood past somewhere in a Russian cottage surrounded by illustrated books about castles and kings, and even farther back, straight to Medieval times.

“…this project started a long time ago for me, having taken root in my childhood infatuation with medieval life. Like a never-ending fairy tale, images from medieval life have continued to inspire me.” — Eckemoff, liner notes

She and her merry band of musicians pour everything they have into mostly scripted immersion therapy. It’s another concept album in two volumes, but with the addition of the closest cousin to jazz, funk, and ambient pop (the parentheses in the fine-print disclaimer) — progressive rock — connecting what is felt on the outskirts with what is said in polite society, to listeners as diverse as the Jazz Alley sound guy nodding approval to relinquishing chord progressions as clear as a disembodied church bell and the cocktail couple taking a break before dinner with the in-laws at nearby Palace Kitchen in Seattle.

Meaning, palpable melody you can pick out and hum throughout. The visual equivalent, again, back to the time travel motif, is that of spinning around in the local tavern, pint of Guinness in hand, feeling frothy cool spill over velvet flesh, hearing the precursors — lute and shawm — filling the room with what is and what could be.

Real time travel.

You cannot spit out a review after just one listen. Not with Eckemoff’s multi-media creations.

You must immerse yourself as thoroughly as the musicians do, for weeks at a time, months if need be, to even get a sense of what this classically trained, jazz-enhanced pianist and composer is so carefully and comprehensively driving at — in elaborate sonic doses that engages all the senses needed to musically time travel properly.

But we do not have forever, at least not in this lifetime.

Look for a review this Friday.