Band Of The Week #294 - YAANG
This week's Band of the Week is Manchester based synth-punk-risers YAANG - who has just released their debut EP 'No'.
It’s already been quite the year for YAANG. Announced as part of illustrious hype list NME 100 last month where they were heralded as “one of the most exciting bands to come from the North West.” and growing their list of radio backers supporters to Huw Stephens, Steve Lamacq, Emily Pilbeam, Indie Forever, New Music Fix (BBC Radio 6 Music) and John Kennedy (Radio X)- via backing too from The Line of Best Fit, DIY, and Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon - the trio share long-awaited debut EP No, released today (14th March) via boutique label crackedankles.
Celebrated with the band’s most extensive headline tour to date - culminating in their biggest show yet at The White Hotel in Salford and a debut EU show at Paris’ Supersonic, - plus festival slots at Focus Wales and Left Of The Dial (full details below) - the EP comes in the wake of multiple headline sell-outs in the Manchester home last year, a last minute call-up to join Fat Dog at Aberystwyth's Transform festival in February, and shows with some of alternative music’s biggest new risers - Getdown Services, Maruja, Mandrake Handshake and Dog Race among them.
Recorded in Stoke-on-Trent last summer with Formal Sppeedwear’s Beck Clewlow, and mastered by Jesse F. Keeler of Death From Above 1979 and MSTRKRFT, the No EP marks YAANG’s most elaborate artistic leap yet. Adding experiments of German Motorik, French electro and Post-Punk Disco into their trademark brand of drum-machine’ing punk-rock irreverence - one that has seen their cult following grow ever larger in their native Manchester and beyond - No reveals a band that is more than just fun and games. Just…
They took a moment to talk to us about how the EP came together.
Hey there, how are you? So your EP is out now – how does it feel to have it out there?.
Oliver Duffy: it’s nice. We’ve had these songs for a long time so it’s good to not have to gatekeep them anymore.
Davey Moore: it’s great to have a record out while keeping ownership of all of it, that’s prettt cool.
It is called ‘No’ – what is the meaning behind that?
OD: I just thought it was funny. The 'No' entry sign was an idea I had walking home from work crossing the street. The idea of working on an EP for ages and just calling it “No.” makes me laugh every time I think about it.
Where was it recorded? Any behind the scenes stories you are willing to share with us?
OD: we did it at Tremolo in Stoke, Formal Sppeedwear’s practice space.
Ben White: Ollie and I slept on Beck from Speedwear’s floor for the entirety of our visit, surrounded by dogs.
DM: I slept at my mum’s house in an oatcake coma.
What are the key influences behind the EP?
BW: Krautrock, French house, new wave, British punk. Each song draws from one of them in some form.
If the EP could be a soundtrack to any film – which one and why?
BW: My Sister’s Keeper
OD: it’s 19 minutes long it’d be a pretty fuckin short film
DM: Happy Gilmore
Do you have a favourite lyric on the EP? If so, which one and why?
OD: I like that “comfort me I just want to be held” is the only line on Comfort and it’s 7 and a half minutes long.
BW: “Half a man, call me Charlie Sheen” because we all know at the time of airing he was never intended to be the half man, but in recent news it seems he ain’t all there so maybe he was the half man all along
Now the EP is out there – what next for you?
OD: delete it.
