YATTA are like micro-auteurs: although their artistic statements tend to be understatements, they’re so densely packed with ideas that you can almost hear footnotes dangling from their orchestration. Their 2017 debut record, Spirit Said Yes!, managed to dabble in industrial pop, field recordings, modern classical stylings, and even jazz standards within the span of 16 minutes, proving that ambition can still find a home in today’s streaming economy.
WAHALA, their upcoming sophomore LP, is slated to drop August 2 via PTP (pre-order here), venturing into creative layers deeper and darker than what was mapped out in Spirit Said Yes!
“This album is about being black, being trans, and being African on foreign land,” says YATTA. “It’s about the tension, splitting, mania, psychosis, and depression that work like a symphony of Bop It!s to keep me alive.”
“Cowboys,” the latest entry in the 2019 Yee-Haw Canon, is also our first taste of WAHALA. Introduced by sickly, cyborgian chants, it’s anything but the boot-stomping jam that its title implies, opting for rattling guitar drones that recall Sonic Youth’s Confusion Is Sex. A dark-jazz spoken-word piece briefly penetrates the tension, only to beget pure catharsis: a peal of mangled screams and synth hatches from the gloom, leaving behind only laughter.
“Artsy black girls are like Pokémon, gotta catch ‘em all.”
WAHALA tracklist:
01. A Lie
02. Blues
03. Cowboys
04. Bliss
05. Rollin
06. Sullivan Place
07. Francis
08. Galaxies
09. I Will Definitely Feel Good
10. Shine
11. Underwater, Now