Yerkish

Related Content

• DIY feminist science writer Margaret Wertheim discusses the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef
  May 3, 2012
• From a nature-doc angle, Chimpanzee is impressive stuff
  April 19, 2012
• Students and gorillas enjoy local food on Colorado Proud School Meal Day
  September 14, 2011
• Top five Colorado-animals-behaving-badly stories
  May 24, 2012
• Fracking the North Fork Valley: Opponents exult as BLM defers drilling
  May 3, 2012

More About

• Wildlife
• Social and Behavioral Sciences

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Music Newsletter: Keep your thumb on the local music scene with music features, additional online music listings and show picks. We'll also send special ticket offers and music promotions available only to our Music Newsletter subscribers.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Yerkish is a language created by experimental researchers to facilitate communication between chimpanzees and humans using geometric forms. And that's about as apt a metaphor as you'll find for this band's approach to creating its music. Just as mathematics is the most direct approach that humans have devised to communicate with intelligent species not our own, music is an art form that doesn't require you to speak the same language in order to appreciate it. Initially, this four-song EP sounds like yet another prog-metal band trying to emulate Tool -- which we've all had just about enough of by now, haven't we? It quickly becomes apparent, however, that there's much more going on, as mathy progressions collide with improvisational jazz and cerebral lyricism. Although Yerkish presents a somewhat dim view of humanity on Vignettes, the songs are tempered with a defiant hopefulness. First impressions aside, Yerkish has much more to offer than mere Keenan and Patton idolatry.