Interview from article “Cold Suns and Warm Moons: The Music of Yelena Eckemoff”

As the unnamed sequel to Cold Sun, Grass Catching the Wind picks up where the former left off with “Anticipation of Spring.” Its shaded bass solo, courtesy of Vinding, sets the tone for the album’s crepuscular seepage. Nocturnal gestures unfurl in “Night of the Fireflies & Crickets” and the masterful “Neverland,” while “Summer Heat,” “Harvest,” and “Sonnet for the Flowers” flap like laundry hanging in an afternoon breeze, intermittently revealing the vast countryside behind.

TG: You seem to be overflowing with musical ideas. What is your creative wellspring? What inspires you?

YE: Musical ideas and melodies constantly bubble up and accumulate inside me. Making music for me is the way to live and to cope with my life’s ups and downs. If I can’t express myself in music, I virtually suffocate. I hear music everywhere, especially in nature, but my feelings and emotions are still the greatest source of my inspiration and stimulant for my creativity.

We also find ourselves in the more upbeat stylings of drummer Morten Lund in “Somebody Likes Jogging,” “Rain Streams,” and “Emerald World,” the latter being the grooviest leg on this tour and the album’s crowning highlight. The distinctive bass line in the title track also pulls us forward in fluid motion, fanned along by card-deck riffles from snare. And where “Overcast” engages shadowy figures in a puppet show of opaque emotions, “Beautiful Destruction” actually bonds them with light. This is music unveiled to reveal a softly beating heart, where memory is the only present.

TG: I hear so many memories in your pieces, as if each were an autobiography in miniature, the reflection of a time and place long past but ever alive in your heart. How much of you resides in this music?

YE: My music is me, no question about it. If you listen to my music, you get to know me better than you would through talking or anything else. My soul is completely bare in what you hear! I never try to show off or please the listener. My only aspiration is to express my thoughts and feelings as accurately as only I can. I can’t resist this overwhelming desire—to pour out my soul in sounds and reach out to the people who would like to feel the same vibes.