Patrick Kay writes about music for PTSOTL sometimes, which is good, because I sure as hell don't want to do it. Check out some of his previous pieces: Reviewing the Reviewers: The Best, and Worst, of the UK Music Magazines from Mixmag to Uncut to Kerrang, and A history of dubstep, from grime to 2-step to Justin Bieber
Yamantaka//Sonic Titan are artists in the truest sense of the word: talented musicians, visual artists and storytellers. Their sort-of self titled album YT//ST actually came out right at the end of 2011, but I’ve been listening to it all year. Based in the frozen north (Montreal), the group is centered round two core members, Alaska B and Ruby. “Prog rock” has been thrown around the describe their music but I’m reluctant to use the phrase, having as it does connotations of grandiose wankery. The album owes a debt to prog in its narrative and overarching concept, but musically it’s a million miles from self-indulgent noodling. Instead their sound is an ambitious but tightly-focused distillation of metal, noise and indie. This scorching debut is only the start for the pair; future plans include a video game, an opera and much more music. Last week Alaska very kindly took some time to answer a few questions about the album and the thinking behind it. Read on to learn more about their awesomely immersive aesthetic philosophy, fever dream inspiration and brain dead mascots on comet-like collision trajectories…
PTSOTL: It seemed like Yamantaka // Sonic Titan just popped into existence a year ago as this fully-formed mulch-disciplinary band, or collective. with a unique aesthetic surrounding and supporting your music. But, of course, there were years of work behind the album. You've actually been together since 2007 I believe? Can you tell us a little bit about the years before you had a release?
Alaska: We mostly put on quarterly art/music shows at underground venues like the late Friendship Cove, as well as more out there places like the Eaton Centre Food Court at midnight as part of Nuit Blanche. We did some art installations in galleries around the city as well. Our line up changed regularly with every show, it was more outsider art collective than a band.
I've read a few interviews with yourselves where you discuss the manga influence in your aesthetic - could you tell us a bit more about the First People influence? It's an area of history I know very little about. "" in particular sounds like it could be the story of a vision quest with lyrics like "wolf's breath in my head" and "ravens on wing."
Some of our current and former members/collaborators are Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk), having collaborated with artist/drummer Walter K Scott, hairdresser/diva Jonas Gilbert and currently with theatre professional/performer Ange Loft. “Queens” though was written by myself after a dark fever dream on the coast of Cape Breton Island, wherein I had Queer visions of Ragnarok (I was studying the Voluspa at the time) and an army of whales shedding their blubber and flesh to crash against the shore.
The cover of Yt // St looks like a depiction of some kind of creation myth - what influenced it? The album's opener "Raccoon Song" sounds like the birth of something...
I was the artist on the cover. It was meant to be a pretty transparent reference to the psionic explosion from Katsuhiro Otomo's 'Akira'. The orb however has been replaced with Blastro, who is our mascot of sorts. In the illustrated world attached to our work, he’s like the child of a world of nationalism, hyper media, right-wing capitalism and mass technological abstraction. He is found in space, brain dead and flying like a comet on a collision course with NeverFlat, the last planet in the universe. The cover depicts the impact and landing upon the planet's surface.
All of my favourite albums of the year have created a completely self-contained world around themselves - not just the music but the artwork, the whole aesthetic, and that's something you've done in such a coherent and fresh way. Even the way the songs on YT // ST flow into each other makes the experience completely immersive. If I'm listening to music on shuffle and one of your songs comes on I almost always start playing the album all the way through from the beginning - listening to it in smaller chunks just isn't as satisfying. "Crystal Fortress..." and "", for example, work perfectly in the context of the other songs surrounding them. Did you have any ideas about how the album would be listened to?
Yeah, the record is a micro-narrative version of our much ballyhooed and unfinished opera, "Star". The creation of Star was put on hold due to budgetary reasons and the fact that we have become suddenly very busy. But the themes are there. Currently we are reworking this story for our upcoming video game, "Your Task // Shoot Things".
Is it challenging putting together all the textures for your live shows?
Yes, it’s incredibly difficult.
So how does your sound change between recordings and performing live?
The album was a work of studio labour, with only a few of the original performers touring with us now, and many extra parts on synthesizers or keyboards were performed by myself during the original recording. It was hard to translate that from the studio into a live performance. Touring is expensive and has forced us to work with technology in order to try and replicate that experience at all. In general, performing live is difficult, and being able to perform the album faithfully was another huge problem. We're already touring with new music that is more in line with our current line up.
Is your name a homage to ? What does Yamantaka mean?
Yes. I am an unabashed metal head and Sleep is one of my all time favourite bands, but we chose the name also because of our early approaches to music as weirdo north American Buddhists, in the pursuit of some massive cosmic sound. Yamantaka (sanskrit for "Terminator of Death") is the name of one of the wrathful manifestations of Manjushri, a Buddhist Bodhisattva. In this form (also known as Shri Vajrabhairava) Manjushri appears as the Hindu god of death, Yama, a blue Ox but with heads, arms and legs multiplied into infinity. The only thing scarier than Death, is the lack of fear of Death. So to invoke Yamantaka is like becoming Death itself, but so much more badass. How's that for a way to get enlightened?
Finally, I wanted to ask you a little bit about the makeup you wear in photos and on stage. There are so many different ways in which musicians wear makeup and masks - corpsepaint in black metal which is deadly serious, people like Kiss having fun with it, kumadori in Japanese kabuki which I'm assuming is a direct influence for the designs you wear... is your makeup part of assuming characters who express the music? Or is it a direct expression of yourselves? How different does it feel performing in costume against performing in normal clothes?
Finally, I wanted to ask you a little bit about the makeup you wear in photos and on stage. There are so many different ways in which musicians wear makeup and masks - corpsepaint in black metal which is deadly serious, people like Kiss having fun with it, kumadori in Japanese kabuki which I'm assuming is a direct influence for the designs you wear... is your makeup part of assuming characters who express the music? Or is it a direct expression of yourselves? How different does it feel performing in costume against performing in normal clothes?
I like to think of it as Buddhist corpsepaint with an homage to Kumadori and Peking Opera Paint styles for people who want a different kind of KISS. The makeup are the faces of characters that can be direct expressions of ourselves, and it almost feels weird to perform in normal clothes nowadays.
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