Newly signed to Fire Records, after Yosa Peit’s super limited debut album was hailed in some corners as “warped lo-fi meets glitchy electronica”, elsewhere as “craggy interdimensional pop hits”. Organically nurtured, Peit summons up visions of the green buds of a tree growing through a coil of electric cables.
Out on 11th November, ‘Phyton’ will have a special worldwide expanded deluxe edition release where shoots of progress are set to blossom. It features unreleased tracks: ‘Tyrann’, a live version of the haunting album track ‘Serpentine’ and end of the night lament, ‘Rise’.
‘Phyton’ is a conundrum with its own humour and beauty amid the electronica soundtracking – a record that’s defied genre categories.
Think Laurie Anderson playing chess with Bjork, while a soulful Lorraine Ellison aches and alien messages flutter through an old cathode tube. Think Prince arm-wrestling with Arthur Russell overlapped with the hum of Blue Velvet, its ambience and jarring sound effects splintered like Aphex Twin.
“I started making sounds on some free music software. I always liked the approach of using tech intuitively. My way of working is quite idiosyncratic.”
Yosa began singing and producing with her distinctive vocal style matched by experimental productions, a union that blossomed in 2015, when she debuted with ‘Constellation’, a scatter-gun of glitchy soul on Brandt Brauer Fricks’ label.
“I had an absolute fascination for anything that sounded different to what I had heard growing up.”
Holly Herndon sought her out to sing on her 4AD release as Proto, an aside that further enhanced the intrigue. She experimented with her voice then created ‘Phyton’, a multi-faceted beast; beautifully soulful, simple, but complicated nonetheless.
It was an organic process that fed off itself, something that’s replicated in Yosa’s project work on her award-winning Error Music, an initiative funded by the city of Berlin, providing workshops for girls and non-binary kids where they learn to code, build synthesizers or theremins and perform free from any expectation.
“Embracing errorism means nothing can sound wrong. It gives kids the chance to work with their hands, become self-confident as they explore electronic music and technology in a playful way.”
And that’s something that’s central to Yosa’s own growth as an artist.
