Yellow6 is the solo project of British, Leicester based guitarist Jon Attwood. According to his bio, he has at times been described as post-rock, minimalist, electronica, ambient… the reality is that Yellow6 has some similarity with each of those genres but is not so easily definable, using aspects of drone, repetition, melody, harmony, noise and silence to create absorbing soundscapes to drift off into.
He’s back with a new album called The Cloud Factory which is out now via sound in silence. According to the press release, The Cloud Factory is made up of ten new tracks with a total duration of about 67 minutes. All tracks were recorded at home between March and May 2021, and were expertly mastered by George Mastrokostas (aka Absent Without Leave).
The past year has been a busy one for Yellow6, with a number of album releases, exploring variations in composition and instrumentation, along with two collaborative projects. After completing For The First And Last, and material for a forthcoming album for Enraptured, both being more focused on beats and distorted guitars, Attwood decided to shift the focus, in part inspired by recent work by Warren Ellis and Nick Cave’s soundtrack work, and the varied minimalist approach of Philip Glass and Burial among others. Rather than the previously used approach of anchoring each tune on arpeggiated and delayed guitars to set the tone, these tracks have a greater focus on more abstract and heavily effected loops, topped with repeating intertwining clear and clean guitars, which was helped by a change to a more minimal effects board.
Listen below.