Yeti Rain—a dark, ambient collaboration between former Racine resident William Kopecky on bass and Chicago's saxophone/wind synth master Roger Ebner—expands to a trio for the aptly titled III. Craig Walkner, another former Wisconsinite, adds exceptional dimension to Yeti Rain's disturbing wall of sound with acoustic and electric percussion.
Recorded at Racine's Studio One, III finds the trio engaged in writing songs that are more complete. Credit that to Walkner's presence, felt midway through the foreboding opening track “Planets.” His beats launch Yeti Rain into a celestial rhythm that rotates on a jazz-fusion axis, Ebner's squealing sax damn near bursting your eardrums. “Dragonfly Algebra,” as its name suggests, is more abstract and overbearing, reaching into the dark nether regions of the listener's soul and extracting … well, who really knows?
But as effective as Ebner and Walkner are, it is Kopecky (now residing in France) who delivers the ultimate creep-out with a whispered recitation of his 11-minute poem song, “The Sky Sickened.”
