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Yeti Lane to play at Sticky Mike's Frog Bar
Love Thy Neighbour Presents:
Yeti Lane + Speak Galactic + Atlantic & Lion
Monday 18th June @ Sticky Mike's Frog Bar - 8pm £5.50 adv / £more on the door
MORE INFO & TICKETS
“The result is stunning – like Grandaddy’s ‘The Software Slump’ reimagined by Kraftwerk and Kevin Shields.” 8/10 - NME
“The Echo Show deserves a place in any music fan’s collection.” 9/10 – The Telegraph
Yeti Lane are made up of ex-Cyann & Ben members Ben Pleng & Charlie Boyer. Their second album 'The Echo Show' has been getting some amazing press and has seen them compared to the likes of Grandaddy, Kraftwerk, Spacemen3, Neu! and Simon and Garfunkel. They have just finished touring with Europe with Diagrams and come over to the UK to promote said album, which is out now on Sonic Cathedral.
“We have evolved into something that we wanted to be, but the fact that there are just two of us now allowed us to do it faster,” explains Charlie. “I would say that as a result we dig the kraut/spacerock side of our music more, it’s less ‘poppy’. We now take the time to elaborate the moods as well as the walls of sound. We might be a duet now, but we still want to sound like a four-piece.”
It’s true, their latest album, ‘The Echo Show’ sounds huge. Not least because of the input of co-producer and mixer Antoine Gaillet, who has previously worked with M83, Zombie Zombie and Ben and Charlie’s previous band, Cyann & Ben. “Antoine is as obsessed with sound and production as we are,” reveals Charlie. “During the recording he was always trying new tricks to get ‘the’ sound, it was sometimes tense, but he helped us to go one step further.”
He certainly did. Opener ‘Analog Wheel’ sounds, thrillingly, like Kraftwerk playing My Bloody Valentine, the fizzing electronics on the likes of ‘Logic Winds’ and the title track nod to Broadcast and Stereolab and the unusual twists and turns of ‘Warning Sensations’ and ‘Strange Call’ are worthy of Can or Pavement. “Every day on the way to the recording studio, I remember listening to a lot of Bardo Pond, White Hills, No Age, LCD Soundsystem, Gavin Russom, Ride and The Flaming Lips,” recalls Charlie. “I also watched cheesy old sci-fi movies like Starcrash.”
All of which clearly made its mark on the finished album. And, while Charlie admits he’s more interested in “arrangements, sounds, musical landscapes and waves of noise, rather than song writing”, the ever-present melodic element in every Yeti Lane song is down to Ben balancing out the equation thanks to his effortless way with a tune. “Essentially,” he explains, “I like good songs and good trippy music.”
Never is this more obvious than on ‘Dead Tired’ and ‘Sparkling Sunbeam’, the latter of which includes Ben harmonising with David-Ivar Herman Düne over some gloriously melancholy cosmic pop that sounds like Teenage Fanclub backed by Spacemen 3.
“The influences are still the same, but I feel that we tried to be more coherent with them,” says Ben. “We didn’t want that this album to sound like a patchwork of different ideas, we wanted it to take its own shape.”
So, having made their masterpiece, Charlie is now hoping that Yeti Lane finally “sell some records before the music industry collapses”. Ben’s ambitions are even more straightforward: “While everything’s turning crazy around us, I think I’m just gonna turn my amps up loud and enjoy the sounds.” And what better sounds to enjoy than those of ‘The Echo Show’.
Their new single that will be out digitally on June 18. The title track is Warning Sensations, and it will include remixes by School of Seven Bells and Warm Digits.
