Phillipe Roberts
Yesterday’s Homily, the latest from soul-infused experimentalist Jon Bap, begins almost imperceptibly: a high-pitched drone, sounding like half-filled wine glasses played in reverse, hovers in, hanging overhead in stasis like a U.F.O. The sci-fi whine builds to a peak before suddenly shape shifting into a radio jingle. “Hey you, what are you doing today? / This is your life story.” For the next 43 minutes, Bap takes the listener on a tour of his mental airwaves, sifting through channels of cerebral future funk, delicate lo-fi balladry, free jazz soundscapes, and weird hip-hop. At times, the barrage of styles can feel alien in its methodology, but Bap’s steady hand on the dial and his highly expressive melodic voice filter out the noise to a (mostly) soothing hush. Be warned: your neck may snap from the sudden shock of his incessant genre-hopping, but Yesterday’s Homily swings with a fragile, unvarnished humanity that cuts through its chaotic musical clutter.
“Today, with Vigor,” the first “proper” tune on the album, functions as a drum kit warm-up, both for the audience and, as the exasperated, glitched-out “fuck” at the end suggests, Bap himself. The playing on the record is all his, but percussion is the primary prism through which Bap draws Yesterday’s Homily into existence—and it shows. The record is dense with fluttering rhythms in a constant state of flux, battling the encroaching confusion of saxophones, guitars, bass, and voice memo samples. The array of styles at his disposal is staggering. “Today, with Vigor” sees him flailing furiously against the kind of prog-rock noodling that might crop up as a sample on an MF Doom release. A chopped-up funk strut powers “My House” into the top spot for the album’s most danceable moment, while a dizzying flourish of hi-hats gives “My Machine (Digs a Hole)” its wavy, neo-soul backbone.
As dazzling as these feats of percussive ingenuity might be, the way he presents them lends the album much of its organic feel. Whether sloshing up against odd-metered lo-fi samples or careening to a halt as a take goes off the rails, Bap’s playing doesn’t so much hem in those wackier elements within restrictive structures as provide a homing beacon to eventually guide him back to Earth. His samples—the grains of reality that he allows to seep into this extra-dimensional world he’s created—perform a similar function. “Voice Memo from 2013,” a clattering of percussive chimes with a soulful groaning underneath, is entirely one fuzzy recording until “_Stuck_” loops it into skeletal disco. And the soft ballad “Come Back Home” sounds all the more devastating as a cell phone-quality recording, its electric guitar strums de-tuning and deforming before they have a chance to harden against pretty post-production.
These wrinkles, and a smirking sense of humor (we see you, “Free Trap Etudes”), lend Yesterday’s Homily a relaxed, sentimental mood that becomes its greatest asset. “This wouldn’t all exist without empty space,” a disembodied voice muses at the end of the record, and it’s a truism that carries weight for the album in question. Because the empty spaces—the vantage points of reality from which Jon Bap carefully considers his sermon on love, fear, and anxiety—are what make Yesterday’s Homily work. It’s a rush to hear such a bright voice consider so many ideas, but a treasure to see them combed over so thoroughly.