Listen:
Details
Format: LP
Label: Spinster
Year: 2021
Media Condition: New
Sleeve/Cover Condition: New
TRACKS:
A1 Sunshowers
A2 I Wonder (Song for Michael)
A3 Juvenescence
A4 Dragonfly
A5 Swift Breeze
B1 Adrift (ft. Taryn Wood)
B2 Through the Woods
B3 Jarabi
B4 Urban Driftwood (ft. Amadou Kouyate)
B5 After the Storm
PERSONNEL:
Yasmin Williams - guitar
Taryn Wood - cello
Amadou Kouyate - djembe and cadjembe
Northern Virginia native Yasmin Williams sits with her guitar stretched across her lap horizontally with its strings turned to the sky. She taps on the fretboard with her left hand as her right hand plucks a kalimba placed on the guitar’s body. Her feet, clad in tap shoes, keep rhythm on a mic’d wooden board placed under her. Even with all limbs in play, it’s mind boggling that the melodic and percussive sounds that emerge are made by just one musician, playing in real time.
With her ambidextrous and pedidextrous, multi-instrumental techniques of her own making and influences ranging from video games to West African griots subverting the traditionalist canon of fingerstyle guitar, Yasmin Williams is truly a guitarist for the new century. So too is her stunning sophomore release, Urban Driftwood, an album for and of these times. Though the record is instrumental, its songs follow a narrative arc of 2020, illustrating both a personal journey and a national reckoning, through Williams’ evocative, lyrical compositions.
Label: Spinster
Year: 2021
Media Condition: New
Sleeve/Cover Condition: New
TRACKS:
A1 Sunshowers
A2 I Wonder (Song for Michael)
A3 Juvenescence
A4 Dragonfly
A5 Swift Breeze
B1 Adrift (ft. Taryn Wood)
B2 Through the Woods
B3 Jarabi
B4 Urban Driftwood (ft. Amadou Kouyate)
B5 After the Storm
PERSONNEL:
Yasmin Williams - guitar
Taryn Wood - cello
Amadou Kouyate - djembe and cadjembe
Northern Virginia native Yasmin Williams sits with her guitar stretched across her lap horizontally with its strings turned to the sky. She taps on the fretboard with her left hand as her right hand plucks a kalimba placed on the guitar’s body. Her feet, clad in tap shoes, keep rhythm on a mic’d wooden board placed under her. Even with all limbs in play, it’s mind boggling that the melodic and percussive sounds that emerge are made by just one musician, playing in real time.
With her ambidextrous and pedidextrous, multi-instrumental techniques of her own making and influences ranging from video games to West African griots subverting the traditionalist canon of fingerstyle guitar, Yasmin Williams is truly a guitarist for the new century. So too is her stunning sophomore release, Urban Driftwood, an album for and of these times. Though the record is instrumental, its songs follow a narrative arc of 2020, illustrating both a personal journey and a national reckoning, through Williams’ evocative, lyrical compositions.