Album Review by EDF
What do you do if you are a struggling musician and every band that you have been a part of falls apart? Answer is you become your own one-man band and record a whole album by yourself, which is what Albert Kahn has done. Since he did not want to use his own name, Albert calls his group / project Vayizaku (“vah-yee-zah-koo”). Coming from Pennington, New Jersey, how does Vayizaku stand up to other US punk acts and do the likes of Green Day have anything to worry about?
This is a brave effort from Vayizaku who does perform live, aided with a backing tape of bass and drum tracks and armed with his guitar and microphone. The songs themselves are a surprise. From the start, you know that Albert has no problems coming up with guitar riffs and on some tracks such as DECLINED different time signatures appear within the song. We get a slight change with a BAT OUT OF HELL type piano riff on OCEAN. This comes as a welcome change to what has come before and does introduce a new dimension to the music on the album.
It is always a brave choice to record a complete album on your own and to record 42 minutes of pounding tracks with some decent songs throughout is quite a feat. Since this is Vayizaku’s first album, there is only one way Albert can improve on his follow up album and that is to bring in other musicians in on the mix. If that is not Albert’s intension, going by what is presented here, he is not short of ideas to do it all over again.
