Melbourne, Australia electronic experimental quartet Big Yawn are pleased to announce that they will release their debut album “No!” on 6th March 2020 via Australian independent record label Research Records (Damo Suzuki Network, Mildlife, Swazi Gold).
Lead single ‘Skin Rat’ is out now and available to stream via all good digital service providers, accompanied by an official animated video directed by Benjamin Portis.
The group’s freshest effort captures the band performing live in the studio, and it’s typical Big Yawn: fat and punchy low-end bass, drums and live drum processing, delay FX samples, and thick syrupy synths — ‘Skin Rat’ is a hyperbolically dubbed-out, tongue-in-cheek, magnetic blend of UK garage, footwork and breaks.
Commenting on their approach to making music together, the band say: “It’s 4 guys in a room toying with instruments, trying to make music that causes our heads to bob up and down, to perspire. ‘No!’ is a term frequently employed in the studio the louder, the looser, the more laconic it’s said, the bigger a laugh it gets. The joke is that NO actually means a yes it’s a breaking ball Type B expression of camaraderie, a refusal to take shit super serious like.”
Primarily rooted in a live performance approach, the Melbourne quartet embraces sonic curios from far-flung corners of the globe and display them with pride. Affectations for vintage krautrock, esoteric percussion, and experiments in steady dance grooves merge with heavy low-end frequencies to ‘explore and exploit’ those in-between spaces.
Championing a hybrid vision of cross-genre harmony, their music manages to capture the sweaty spirit of DIY basement shows as much as it works on record. Encompassing disorientating dub FX, off-kilter synth squelches and live re-sampling, their stoned meanderings mix with grinding propulsion.
The band’s multiple facets fluctuate neatly across forthcoming debut full length “No!”, as the band explain of its creation: “ “No!” is the sum of its parts—it was two years of writing, recording, jamming, mixing and playing shows. It’s our own spin on the genres and styles that have parented and companioned our outside work downtime. It was many more years of just being friends and informal collaborators, sharing music and how-to’s.”
Acting as a gateway to their sound, subtle dub techno delays combine with live drums on opener ‘Attaboi’ to formally introduce their clear affectation for the motorik sounds of 70s Deutschland. Lead single ‘Skin Rat’ curiously references off-rhythms and vocal cut-ups a la late naughties UK bass music, while abstract jams such as ‘For Whomst’ channel the adventurous live-and-direct sound of Golden Teacher and kindred experimentalist Inga Copeland.
Heavy low-end bass frequencies and twitches of dub FX permeate the LP, with shades of post-punk and loopy minimal wave ‘Doodle Damage’ contrasting with the more jagged dance-orientated moments. In opting to close “No!” with their most expansive recording to date in the form of ‘Body Double’, Big Yawn delve deeper into tense and ritualistic atmospheres that prior tracks only hint at.
The effect seems akin to a snapshot into their lengthy freestyle practice sessions—a process honed and refined here for the LP format. Until their next outing, the relentless groove of ‘Anthem X’ will keep hips swaying during those sweaty early morning club hours.
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