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No Time To Chill: Yuri’s “Nijuuichi Seiki No Rinri”

While I respect how so much music in the digital-and-streaming age can help people focus or get various chores done, I’m also a little hesitant of how frequently songs simply become background music. Besides often being boring, it just feels like a cheap approach to art, to reduce it to room filler. Yuri’s Nijuuichi Seiki No Rinri doesn’t allow listeners to drift off, because every track here moves in way demanding attention. This comes close to being a beat tape, underlined by the two guests here being rappers (including Tamana Ramen on . But these aren’t songs to do homework too. Opener “Kyou Mimei” matches bell chimes with pleasant electronic notes…before letting clanging percussion rattle off in the back, disrupting the dream-like state Yuri initially creates. This ever-present disconnect between the relaxing and ruptured proves to be the album’s strength, with numbers like “Access” not even settling into a beat structure, but shooting off all over from rhythmic to uneasy. Get it here, or listen below.