This one right here took me by surprise for sure. As I'm prone to do, I was surfing around on the superly awesome Brooklyn Vegan site and stumbled across an intriguing picture. It was two women sitting surrounded by drums with Asian opera masks on with a kinda of Ladytron noir vibe going on. The bands name was Yamantaka // Sonic Titan. With that name and the visual aesthetic that was presented to me, lets say I was intrigued. I read further, bands like Sleep, Queen, Qotsa, Ladytron (pegged that one) popped up as comparisons. Holy shit, I like all of those things! Then things like traditional Japanese opera and performance artists popped up. "Dude gotta check this out", I thought to myself. So I did. Let me tell you, this band, group, collective, continual art piece, or whatever you'd like to call them is flat out awesome.
YT//ST is the brainchild of Montreal performance artists Alaska B and Ruby Kato Attwood whose previous project was called Lesbian Fight Club. I know, right! Armed with an incredible sense of design, mad illustration skills, and a huge pile of "junk electronics" Ruby and Alaska wanted to start a project that would combine all of that with their strong cultural identities (both are mixed race). Forming in 2007 they quickly found their direction and started work on the first of their "Noh-Wave" operas." Noh" referring to the Japanese opera format . Through their short homebrewed operas they eventually formed a network of Asian and Indigenous artists that comprise the current collective. Montrealers(?) have had the pleasure of being wowed by YT//ST performances for some time now, now it's the rest of the worlds turn. Set against massive and quite intricate homemade black & white cardboard sets, YT//ST craft a complete experience for their audience. Visually its stunning enough, but throw in the fact that Alaska and Ruby are killer musicians, takes YT//ST over the top. It's gorgeous, other worldly, sludgy, and it rocks. Any other attempts to describe this album musically would not do it justice. Listen to this immediately! Most Definitely a year end contender for me. Yeah, I know it came out last year, but it's new to me!
* I mistakenly identified Noh as a Chinese format when in fact it is Japanese. Thank you, reader.
YT//ST is the brainchild of Montreal performance artists Alaska B and Ruby Kato Attwood whose previous project was called Lesbian Fight Club. I know, right! Armed with an incredible sense of design, mad illustration skills, and a huge pile of "junk electronics" Ruby and Alaska wanted to start a project that would combine all of that with their strong cultural identities (both are mixed race). Forming in 2007 they quickly found their direction and started work on the first of their "Noh-Wave" operas." Noh" referring to the Japanese opera format . Through their short homebrewed operas they eventually formed a network of Asian and Indigenous artists that comprise the current collective. Montrealers(?) have had the pleasure of being wowed by YT//ST performances for some time now, now it's the rest of the worlds turn. Set against massive and quite intricate homemade black & white cardboard sets, YT//ST craft a complete experience for their audience. Visually its stunning enough, but throw in the fact that Alaska and Ruby are killer musicians, takes YT//ST over the top. It's gorgeous, other worldly, sludgy, and it rocks. Any other attempts to describe this album musically would not do it justice. Listen to this immediately! Most Definitely a year end contender for me. Yeah, I know it came out last year, but it's new to me!
* I mistakenly identified Noh as a Chinese format when in fact it is Japanese. Thank you, reader.
Buy it:
* The first pressing of the vinyl is sold out but they should be repressing soon.
Noh is Japanese, not Chinese, but yes this band rules.
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