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Andrew Yarovenko – Start Somewhere
On his new LP, Start Somewhere, Los Angeles composer & multi-instrumentalist Andrew Yarovenko has created an evocative sonic journey through disillusionment in the face of late-stage capitalism. “Even though this record is instrumental it’s kind of a concept album,” says Yarovenko. “It’s about getting out of the modern locked-into-neo-liberal-capitalism thing and finding some sort of way to thread the needle where you’re still a functional part of society but feel like you have some autonomy and space to think.”
Start Somewhere has been a long time coming for Yarovenko, a project that has been simmering on the back burner for years, slowly taking shape and developing into the transportive work that it is today. Multiple tracks on the album have been in development for over a decade, while other compositions were finished the morning of recording. As a result, Start Somewhere is not only an instrumental roadmap for escaping the weight of modern social pressures, but also a chronicle of Yarovenko’s development as an artist and composer.
To record Start Somewhere, Yarovenko recruited Boston-based recording and mixing engineer Peter Atkinson (Editrix, Queen Crony, Wendy Eisenberg), mastering engineer Ruairi O’Flaherty (Leslie Odom Jr., Los Lobos, Matt and Kim), and a studio ensemble consisting of violinists Amanda Lo and Desiree Hazley, violist Kiana Ana, cellist Isaiah Gage, and spectralist composer Emerson Sudbury. “The players that I worked with are all absurdly talented studio musicians,” says Yarovenko. “I wrote sheet music for them on all but two tracks and they laid it down beautifully. For the other two (“The Death of Odysseus” and “Ridgewood”) I wrote lead sheets and we just sat on the floor and had a conversation about what sort of things I wanted at what parts of the song, and they nailed it on like the second take.”
Although Start Somewhere is his debut LP as an artist, Yarovenko has been composing and recording for years in his work as a composer for film. Educated in composition and performance from a young age, Yarovenko honed his skills as a multi-instrumentalist through his teenage years and into adulthood, cutting his teeth in various indie-rock and post-punk bands before committing to his future as a composer. Start Somewhere is a culmination of years spent learning the rules of composing for film as well as how and when to deliberately break those rules. “Film scoring always gives you a writing prompt because you have to support the scene,” says Yarovenko. “In modern film scoring especially, you really have to fit under things. You can’t step on dialogue, you’re competing with sound effects, anything too melodically or musically compelling tends to put whatever’s happening on screen behind glass and makes it feel kind of distant. Writing this album allowed me to indulge musical ideas that would have been too big for film.”
Informed by his background in film, Start Somewhere follows a linear narrative structure that kicks off with “No Body To Blame,” a lush, piano-led track that explores one’s relationship with the world around them and emphasizes feelings of ennui and disconnection. The tone abruptly shifts on the following track, “Explaining The Joke,” a world-shattering dark turn that casts the listener into disorder, wrestling with dissatisfaction and isolation and setting them on the journey towards solace chronicled throughout Start Somewhere.
Throughout the album, Yarovenko paints sonic vignettes, individual scenes that represent emotional or perspective shifts. Standout track “The Death of Odysseus” reckons with ego death and the idea that sometimes in order to truly arrive where you want to be, you must leave behind the version of yourself that brought you there. Meanwhile, the meditative and heart-wrenching “Forty Visits” explores the impersonal nature of statistics and the realities of human impermanence. “Numbers and statistics can be devastating but also make us gloss over the human reality of things,” says Yarovenko. “With ‘Forty Visits,’ I was thinking that I currently live 3000 miles away from my parents and judging by their age and how frequently I see them, how many more times will I realistically see them before one of us dies?”
While Yarovenko’s compositions don’t shy away from dark tonal shifts and sonic explorations of despair, Start Somewhere is ultimately hopeful—a musical journey through the drudgery and crushing weight of late-stage capitalism that seeks to make space for oneself and find comfort and joy wherever possible.
