Track By Track - Yon Yonson Breakdown Hypomantra Album Ah, Yon Yonson. Why can’t everyone make

Track By Track - Yon Yonson Breakdown Hypomantra Album Ah, Yon Yonson. Why can’t everyone make albums as interesting and diverse as yours? If they did, it would solve my saddest musical related problem. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, considering I write about music, but my attention span is equivalent to that of a gnat when it comes to listening to full albums or even short EP’s. Usually the tracks aren’t varied enough in style and sound and I just get so bloody bored!  Sure I could get down on myself for this, but I’d rather blame society! Society encourages us to jump to the next thing if we aren’t entertained enough - and the next thing is a mere click away. Sadly, patience is no longer a virtue.OK, I’ve stepped off my soapbox now. So what makes this Sydney duo’s latest album, Hypomantra, so special that it can hold this gnat’s attention for the full eight tracks and, slightly more impressively, has made big waves on so many large Aussie blogs out there? Is it the eclectic mix of styles, ranging from hip hop, classical music, electronica, jazz and 1950’s big band samples just to name a few? Is it their relatable lyrics, centred around the theme of frustration? Maybe it’s just extremely good music that is incredibly fun to listen too.Whatever it is, the album is intriguing enough for us to want to find out more about each track, which is why we asked Yon Yonson to give us a track by track breakdown. Here is what one half of the duo, Andrew Kuo, had to say: Orontes Lane This song (it’s not even really a song) was one of the last tracks we wrote but we really liked the idea of opening the album with something honest and simple. Lyrically it touches on themes that return over and over in other songs like boredom and frustration. A few people have asked me about the “cutting people open while I change bin bags” line which is a reference to my job as a hospital orderly. Hypomantra by Yon Yonson Intro (No Shade, No Shine, No Birds) Aside from the first song, the album was written chronologically and that’s why we decided to keep this song titled “Intro”. I was concurrently listening to a lot of Dilla and MF Doom  as well as some stuff my grandpa introduced me to like Martin Denny and Spike Jones. This track is just the natural result of those listening patterns I suppose… Hypomantra by Yon Yonson Nothing To Be Done I pretty much sent Nathan the basic instrumental to this track and he sent back that bassline. Everything else developed fairly naturally from there. The lyrics are about the depressing realisation that you actually probably won’t grow up to be a famous singer/football player/actor etc. A lot of people my age (including myself) were told that they could do anything when they grew up but unfortunately it turns out that’s not true. The world needs garbage men (and hospital orderlies). Hypomantra by Yon Yonson Frank Jamal In The Tuxedo There’s not enough doleful piano in music these days. This was originally going to be a very short transition between “Nothing To Be Done” and “HBDYWI” but I bought a Korg SV1 late last year and got a bit carried away. Most of the piano in our tracks are heavily influenced by jazz music but this ended up being pretty straight forward in terms of chords and fancy stuff. Hypomantra by Yon Yonson How Bad Do You Want It I’ve been a fan of Simo Soo’s for a while so when we played a show with him last year we asked if he’d be interested in doing a song together. This is possibly my favourite track on the album as the two different vocal styles (in my opinion) work really well. It’s essentially an energetic song about having no energy. Hypomantra by Yon Yonson Culver City Most of the songs on this album were grounded in the area of Sydney where we grew up but this is the exception. The majority of the instrumental was written while I was living in a trailer park in Culver City, Los Angeles with my friend Lachie (who painted the album art). The main sample is also from a song about Los Angeles. We sampled my own vocals at the end too which is a Yon Yonson trademark. Hypomantra by Yon Yonson Hypomantra Neither Nathan or I have been able to succinctly explain to anyone what Hypomantra means but essentially it’s about a lack of identity. Lot’s of people have things they believe in like God or karma or even just vague ideas like “things always work out for the best”. I realised that I don’t really identify with any of those notions and that’s what this song is about. Bleak… We also just wanted to make this track a bit of a jam so most of Nathan’s bass and my keys are improvised. Hypomantra by Yon Yonson Red And White This is just a song about wine and how it makes going to work more bearable. Nathan was playing around with some terrible old digitech multi-effects guitar pedal and came up with that distorted noisy thing that opens the song. The middle section where it all builds up used to be a lot more intense and had about 7 key changes but we decided to rein it in a bit as it was bordering on the “unlistenable”. The samples are from some M&Ms advert Nathan found on youtube. Hypomantra by Yon Yonson -- source link

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