It is week nine of our Polaris short list streaming extravaganza, and this week we're listening to YT // ST by YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN.
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YAMANTAKA//SONIC TITAN
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YT // ST is the debut album from prog-metal-avant-garde-opera art collective and hyphen necessitators YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN. The band was formed in 2007 in Montreal, but now spends much of its time in Toronto.
The band is centred on drummer Alaska B and singer Ruby Kato Attwood, who are both of Anglo-Asian origin. This juxtaposition is reflected all over the work, from the band’s name to the new genre of music they’ve coined “noh-wave” (a reference to a form of Japanese dance theatre and the no-wave post-punk musical movement).
Discussing the Eastern influence in their work, Alaska B told Pitchfork, “We had this idea that when you see Tantric Buddhists, it's people making a lot of noise together; it's this long journey where you start in one place and don't know exactly where you end.”
YT//ST makes the Polaris short list against all odds. Besides the fact that it is the debut album from an unclassifiable band, at seven songs and 31 minutes it just scrapes by Polaris’s 30-minute or eight-song minimum. Still, within the confines of that half hour, the album is a trip in both senses of the word. First, it’s a journey that explores new sonic spaces, speeding up and slowing down. And it’s a psychedelic hallucination where you find yourself asking, “Has this riff been repeating for 20 seconds or 20 minutes?”
You can stream YT // ST until Sept. 19 on CBC Music. The Polaris Music Prize gala will be broadcast live on CBC Radio 3 on Sept. 24.
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5 for 20: YAMANTAKA//SONIC TITAN