FEATURE: Spotlight: Yves Tumor — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Yves Tumor

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THERE are quite…

a few interesting aspects to Yves Tumor. Their name might be Sean Bowie – I will pop in an interview where Tumor is asked about mystery around their name. The last year or so has been busy for Tumour. The Asympototical World EP was released last month. It followed from the 2020 album, Heaven to a Tortured Mind – one of the best-reviewed and best-loved albums of the year. I discovered Tumor when their second album, Serpent Music, was released in 2017. The first interview that I want to bring in from around that time is from Pitchfork. The first question did concern the mystique around Yves Tumor – and what the real name of the musical wonder was:

“Why don’t you want people to know your name?

I don’t keep anything from people—the people who should know my name and where I live know those things. But as far as journalists and bloggers, I may fabricate things at times. I’m not trying to be like Burial or anything, but I don’t really like people to be involved in my personal life unless they are very close to me and I’ve known them for a long time, just out of respect.

Being online so much, I’ve noticed that people who post a lot of stuff about themselves grow a fanbase out of the constant show that they are putting online, and then their fanbase starts to feel like they know this person personally even though they’ve never met them. It’s happened to my friends who have put themselves out there intensely. Sometimes the fans cross the line and take advantage of this connection, and it becomes super unsettling, and it’s hard to reverse. So I just started to draw back the things I say about myself online, so they don’t have a chance to cross that line.

How did you start making music?

I started playing instruments when I was about 17 in Knoxville, where I was brought up. I got a bass guitar for Christmas and I taught myself corny classic rock: Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix, Zeppelin. Then I started teaching myself acoustic and electric guitar. My grades were so bad my parents took my guitars and bass away, so I just taught myself how to play keyboard. So, in a way, they helped me out in a huge way by doing that. I started making electronic music, and people started to notice my stuff on the internet. I made my first shitty record on GarageBand. It was pretty nasty.

To some extent, though, it seems like you made a leap from noise with Serpent Music. Hearing you say your first instrument was a bass guitar makes so much sense now, because there’s such a groove and rhythm to some of this newer work.

It’s in my DNA. My father is obsessed with Motown, so I’ve always had funky, groovy shit in my ears, probably before I even knew what music was—this shit was being blasted to me in the womb. It’s always been around me, and I still listen to a lot of sexy, sensual music, even while I like listening to harsh, disgusting shit as well.

What’s your general perspective on the world right now?

We’re doomed. That’s it. The world is over. [laughs] Sorry to laugh. But I don’t want people to be happy or sad when they listen. I just want them to be hopeful.

But you just said the world is over. What should people be hopeful about?

A happy ending. And when I say happy ending, I mean that if there is a meteor that’s going to destroy the earth, at least there’s the most beautiful sunset the world has ever seen right before it crushes us. Maybe my album is that sunset”.

There are some great interviews out there with Yves Tumor. Normally, when I do these features, I would provide some biography and background to the artist. Not that much in the way of personal detail – real name, where they live etc. – is known about Tumor. In many ways, the music that they produce is the closest bond…the most honest and personal connection. Perhaps knowing too much about Tumor would strip some of the mystery of the artist and the power in the music. Tumour uses gender-neutral and he/him pronouns (I will use ‘they/them’) - something that is quite rare I find. The New York Times spoke to Tumor when they were promoting the album, Heaven to a Tortured Mind:

“Mixing it up with the audience is part of the Yves Tumor proposition. Bowie, who uses both gender-neutral and he/him pronouns, is a master of anarchic energy with plenty of stories about bloodying fans’ noses at shows. (They never seemed to mind.) The Yves Tumor sound has frequently shifted since Bowie started releasing albums in 2015, encompassing cacophonous electronic noise and smoky rhythm & blues. Some of the music has been so confrontational, it’s even caused its creator some concern: They said they find “Hope in Suffering (Escaping Oblivion & Overcoming Powerlessness),” a 2018 track that begins with what sounds like a gathering swarm of bees before collapsing into machine-gun blasts and a demonic voice, almost too “terrifying” to listen to.

The latest Yves Tumor album, “Heaven to a Tortured Mind,” which was released on Friday, veers closer to standard pop. It’s an album of (relatively) approachable tracks about the common push and pull of the heart, blending tart psychedelia and maximal glam rock. Though earlier work relied on software and samples, here Bowie mostly used live instrumentation. They produced the album along with Justin Raisen, known for a deft hand with both big pop refrains and fuzzy guitar grit in work for Kim Gordon, Angel Olsen and Sky Ferreira. A number of notable vocalists turn up for steamy duets, including the progressive cellist Kelsey Lu and Julia Cumming of the Brooklyn indie band Sunflower Bean. As an artist committed to mystique, Bowie doesn’t share much about their upbringing. They were born in Miami and grew up in Knoxville, Tenn., and figured out how to play the guitar as a teenager by riffing on Nirvana and Green Day songs. After Bowie’s parents confiscated the instrument over poor grades, the young musician learned keys on the family piano, honed a sense of rhythm that came from being raised on Motown and Jimi Hendrix, and started to make amateur recordings in the basement. After a brief stint in college, Bowie moved to Los Angeles and fell in with artists like the queer punk rapper Mykki Blanco, who took them on tour. Bowie started releasing music under various monikers, but Yves Tumor stuck, and the project’s early music, which patched together field recordings, harsh noise and slinky funk, attracted a devoted .audience”.

I am going to finish by bringing it right up to date with The Asympototical World EP. So soon after a remarkable and heartfelt album, Tumor followed it with another remarkable work. Go and get the E.P. if you have not done so already:

“Ground-breaking artist Yves Tumor continues to unlock the perception of reality with a psychedelically bent off-kilter rock offering, The Asymptotical World EP on WARP. The boundary smashing 6 song EP is the next era from the pop auteur and first release from Yves Tumor following the critically acclaimed 2020 album Heaven To a Tortured Mind. Yves Tumor continues to manipulate the genre terrain by challenging mainstream music constraints further and shifting the boundaries of contemporary art and culture in a boundlessly visceral and authentic sonic signature. The Asymptotical World EP (co-produced and engineered by longstanding collaborator Yves Rothman) includes the massive single, “Jackie”, also co-written/produced by Chris Greatti (Yungblud, Poppy). “Jackie” is a punctuated tale of connection in a fever dream realm featuring emotive guitars over an upbeat drum pattern, evoking the volatile magnetism between lovers”. It is another amazing work from one of the most original and consistent artists around. One almost expects something genius and game-changing with every release. That would be unfair, yet Tumor delivers that sort of excellence! It will be interesting to see how Tumor’s music translates to the stage. I have not seen them play. Hearing The Asympototical World EP is bound to be a hugely moving and unforgettable experience! “.

Before closing things, there are a couple of positive reviews for The Asympototical World EP that are worth mentioning. This is what Pitchfork had to say when they reviewed the latest work of brilliance from Yves Tumor:

“Throughout the record, Tumor eases ever more deeply into the role of prismatic bandleader, shifting readily from tone to tone while sustaining a core sense of authority. The lovelorn wail of “Jackie” calcifies into “Secrecy”’s bitterly cool asides, which then evaporate as unsure sighs on “...And Loyalty Is a Nuisance Child.” Across Asymptotical World’s six songs, Tumor plays a roster of characters gripped in various turmoils, acting them out in different postures, from sweltering and vulnerable to icy and impenetrable. At the EP’s molten center is a guest appearance from the industrial noise duo NAKED, whose vocalist Agnes Gryczkowska streaks “Tuck” with glimpses of body horror. “I didn’t die for you,” she insists, “I feel myself/Growing big and hard inside you.” Her voice lifts in a conspiratorial whisper amid scattered, buried beats; it’s the only track on the EP that doesn’t foreground the rhythm section in the mix, and as such it feels boneless, amoebic, like it could at any point open its body and swallow its listener. That is the steady promise of Tumor’s work, and its constant threat: that its strange, inverted intimacy might spill into the listener and turn the self alien. When you recognize the shape of a song but can’t fix its innards, can’t place its emotional register among your catalog of acceptable feelings, what does it do to you? What might meet you there? The Asymptotical World’s motions are recognizable; they come in familiar skin. Under the skin, something ill-fitting thrashes, trying to escape itself, inviting anyone in sight to do the same”.

The second review that caught my eye was from Loud and Quiet. They were definitely struck by the intimacy and potency of The Asympototical World EP:

“At the end of the 1990s, a new genre emerged as the long Britpop tail reached its lowest point. Bands like My Vitriol, with their sharp guitar sound and impressive songwriting, shaped what was briefly (and ironically, for the most part) called “nu-gaze”, creating a unique and never-heard-before soundscape shaking up the stale panorama. Nu-gaze is a peculiar starting point, but it is exactly where Yves Tumor places themselves with new six-track EP The Asymptotical World. A serpent-like artist, constantly changing their skin, Tumor and longtime collaborator Yves Rothman move forward from the soul-inflected sound that informed their previous release, this time seducing listeners and thrusting them out into a parallel reality. In this new, disquieting place, we hear a creature sing to a supposedly significant other, but it’s hard to tell if their words are sweet or menacing: “Hey, little Jackie / When you wake up / Do you think of me? / I said hey, Jackie, baby / When you rest your mind / Do you think of me?” Is it a love-wish or writing on the wall for something more sinister? Tumor’s vocal and delivery are so on point, the sound so intense it tears the skin, that it’s impossible not to wish of being the addressee of their verses. As ‘Secrecy Is Incredibly Important to the Both of Them’ knee-dips into hypnagogic pop, it takes the record into a Prince-meets-Ariel-Pink scenario, giving rise to the following ‘Tuck’, featuring NAKED, which reaches the peak of this eerie climax. Literally, “asymptotical” means “not falling together” or “intersecting at infinity”. And it’s a world forever moving away from our reality the one Yves Tumor builds in this EP. It feels inevitable that we’ll forever try to reach, touch – or escape it”.

I shall wrap up here. The amazing Yves Tumor is someone that you need to get involved with. They are creating music that is so unlike anything else around! It is so easy to become enveloped in and engrossed by this sonic spell. There is no doubt that Yves Tumor is an artist who will be releasing the finest music…