YATTA! by YIN YIN

On their fourth album Yatta!, the celebrated Dutch quartet YĪN YĪN extends, bends, and ignites a joyous mix of disco, funk, surf, psychedelia, and Southeast Asian motifs. UNCUT magazine previously dubbed their highly addictive sound “cosmic disco”—a fitting starting point—but as Yatta! proves, the band's sonic footprint is an ever-evolving kaleidoscope of sounds, textures, and beats.

As with their breakthrough album Mount Matsu (2024), their devotion to getting the dance floor moving remains front and center. That impulse, already strong, 
has intensified — Yatta! lifting it to an ecstatic next level.

The result? An album that reveals a band whose groove just keeps getting deeper.

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The opening track on YĪN YĪN’s new album, Yatta!, begins with a sample of the philosopher Alan Watts expounding: “There is no Yang without Yin and no Yin without Yang.”

Appropriately enough, the track – a jubilantly upbeat slice of disco action – is called “In Search of Yang,” and begs a question about the meaning of the group’s name. The group’s drummer and co-founder, Kees Berkers, explains: “Yin Yang is about balance between two different forces and Yin Yin would essentially mean two negative forces that cannot reach a common ground. So, YĪN YĪN is about finding a balance in the unbalanced.”

Certainly, over the last six years, the quartet from Maastricht in the south of the Netherlands has built a reputation for balancing an eclectic range of influences and using them to forge something that is affectionately retro and, at the same time, fresh and forward-facing.

The group’s origins lie in an experimental jam session in a remote village ballet school in 2017, leading to the release of the single, “Dion Ysiusk,” the following year. The debut album, The Rabbit That Hunts Tigers was released in 2019, followed by The Age of Aquarius in 2022. After a few personnel changes, the quartet’s line-up had, by 2023, arrived at its current form of Kees Berkers (drums), Remy Scheren (bass), Jerôme Scheren (keyboards) and Erik Bandt (guitar). 2024 saw the release of Mount Matsu, now followed by the group’s most complete statement to date, Yatta!

From the beginning, YĪN YĪN have been devoted to exploring global sounds with an emphasis on getting the dance floor moving – an impulse that reaches its peak on Yatta!

One major influence is the sound of Italo Disco – the spacey brand of disco music that arose in Italy in the late 1970s. “It has something of a mystique,’ says Berkers. “All the producers were using new recording techniques and effects, but there are not many pictures or videos of how they were creating things in the studio. You have to use your own fantasy and create your own story about how that music is created.” You can hear that sense of mystery on tracks like “In Search of Yang,” with its endless groove and trippy backwards guitar effects.

Across the album, YĪN YĪN specialise in creating the soundtracks to dream journeys, opportunities for the listener to visit places that exist in realms of the imagination. 

YĪN YĪN:
Kees Berkers: drums
Remy Scheren: bass
Erik Bandt: guitar
Jerry Scheren: keyboards