Tip! *300 copies limited edition* A Hello To A Goodbye was finished during the first throes of the covid lockdown of 2020 in Canada: whatever its initial genesis (a beginning long since forgotten) the results reflect the emotional terminus of that recording process – a person alone, terrified and waiting for the end. Recorded mostly with period hardware, this isolated paranoid landscape is mined with what-ifs and never-mores, a profound distrust of fellow humans, and is a belated goodbye to a naive innocence that was graced to linger far longer than it should have.

Yves Malone is the project of Dylan Marcus McConnell (Adderall Canyonly, Oxykitten, The Department of Harmonic Integrity, The Snowfields). Born from a love of affordable Japanese synths and less-than-optimal drum machines, with a veneration of 80’s action and horror soundtracks, Yves Malone scores the depressive internal dialogues that drive good people to distraction at best, and crippling anxiety at worst, harnessing the malady to rob this poison of the horror it wreaks in service of generating creative endeavours, rather than a terminal ballast that brings us to our lowest.

Following the release of ‘Upon Chrome Skies Rides A Pale Horse’ on the CiS Subscription Library early in the year, Yves Malone makes his full- length debut on the mothership label. For the Toronto-based synthesist life is all about the ups and downs on ‘A Hello To A Goodbye’ as the album was completed during a lengthy solo lockdown that began at the sudden end of a long term relationship. Thing is, you’d expect the soundtrack to a double whammy like that to be wallowing in itself. While the title of the opening track, ‘A Splash Of Palm Razors Across The Sky’, asks more questions than it answers, the music is almost celebratory. And that mood continues into the second track, the hectic upbeat ‘Stiff Starter’. Of course, the record has a flipside. In the gentle thrum of ‘Smoke And Ash, Hand In Hand’ (another thought-provoking title on an album of thought-provoking titles) you can feel the heartbreak.

When times are tough, it’s whatever gets you through the night. On the strength of this, the dawn for Yves is looking bright.