YĪN YĪN

Support: Chica Chica!

Global psych rockers YĪN YĪN are on top of the world with their 3^rd album Mount Matsu

Deeply informed by both the imaginative sound waves of the cosmos as well as the earthly musical culture of Japan, Mount Matsu is the reflection of a chaotic environment of influences slowly coming into focus. Infectious, strangely harmonious and highly energetic, the record is also the first by the band that came into being as the result of a truly democratic process among four befriended musicians. Mount Matsu is bound to do well in end of year lists for anyone into warm and tapey sounding psychedelic disco, fat global funk, electronics and tribal experiments.

Pentatonic scales and unknown sonic territories

Hailing from Holland’s southernmost city of Maastricht, Yīn Yīn entered the scene back in 2019 with the Thai psychrock influenced album The Rabbit that Hunts Tigers, which was followed up in 2022 with the more spiritual and cosmic sounding The Age of Aquarius. Mount Matsu finds the band – who now live and record in a nearby Belgian countryside home and studio – somewhere in between the two first albums as their sound has gradually shifted towards instrumental traditional music of Sōkyoku, and a hint of citypop, but in their own unique way.

Sticking to pentatonic scales, the band’s largely instrumental sound – created with a unique set of instruments including vintage synthesizers and a traditional Chinese string instrument, the guzheng – features big jumps between notes with melodies that are easy to love as they draw the listener into unfamiliar territories.