Where exactly did these frequencies originate? Oakland? LA, alongside the I-10? Fort Worth, Texas? Or maybe Alexandra, Louisiana? It’s not totally clear, but perhaps place disappears when you step inside Son of Rene by Pacific Yew (aka Jeremy Williams). Introspective, entirely downtempo the album’s sounds are built around minimal soul jazz guitar and piano arrangements, scratchy and soulful as if lifted from avant-garde 1960s French films about love. It is minimal but anything but simple, each track gathering overdubs as they progress, while Williams provides the persistent wordbound thread through bars that skip and repeat like a rhythmic mantra. Poetry—mostly muttered, practically whispered—provides the beat.
