YAANG talk growing a new limb, goofing around and new single

YAANG mix electronic goodness, hook-led melodies and Northern grit with all the meat and potatoes of DIY culture, creativity and having a laugh.

Coming in one easy-to-swallow but harder-to-digest pill, the band’s music is strong. When taken it leaves you blurry but energetic, conscious but otherwise occupied. Heavy dosage will leave you stumbling somewhere between social commentary, personal reflection and performative dance, and the side effects are an unholy-but-addictive trinity of hard beats, scratching guitars and lines and lines of synth. We, at The Rodeo, can’t help but love ’em.

Self-described as ‘genre fluid’, the band currently wears a range of hospitality-shaped hats during the day, serving the Oi Polloi and putting up with a variety of drunken jib and an endemic shortage of tips. At night, they turn into a smart live outfit mixing texture and humour to create one of the most impactful live sets currently found in the conjoined cities of Salford and Manchester.

Ahead of their upcoming UK tour, and in light of what has been a transitionary period for the band, Davey, Oliver and now Ben kindly gave us the time of day as we sat down for a quick chin wag. Read away.

Now then boys, what have you been up to since we last got in touch?

Davey Moore: Since the last time we spoke we have grown a limb, become bartenders and toppled the Illuminati. We’ve been in a transitional phase for a while now. Me and Ollie left uni, had to deal with the pandemic and then monsieur Ben joined the fold. So in short we have mastered the art of juggling. 

Oliver Duffy: Yeah, Ben’s here now. There’s three of us. 

I was lucky enough to attend one of your London gigs a while back and was blown away. You were a dynamic duo back then, now you’re a triad. How has the addition of Ben changed things for YAANG?

D.M: The addition of big Ben really changed the way we operate as a band. We had so much responsibility before. Ollie and I would have to do everything. A wall of sound approach is difficult without more limbs, hence the addition of the young monsieur. I’ve felt a door open recently and any barriers that we were facing have now been lifted. We already had a ton of music to release but since Ben joined we’ve got four new tunes. 

O.D: Ben’s a very fast learner which is one of the best skills you can have as a musician, it’s rare I have to show him anything twice which is great for me because I have no patience. 

Ben White: yeah, as an orphan working in factories from age 3 being a fast learner was a skill I really needed. Got me more gruel than the other kids!

Can you describe what the beginning of your creative process looks like compared to the end?

D.M: The beginning of the process is often blissfully chaotic (the tagline of my life) one member will present a cool sound or riff, the other starts to doodle and experiment while I smash pads on my sampler to develop the rhythm. Ultimately, we jam until we start dancing and/or laughing, because if we aren’t having fun then it’s not the one. Once that is achieved it’s just a case of refining it. 

O.D: When it was just the two of us, everything used to start with Davey and then I’d add stuff and refine things, which was fine but also because of the nature of our live setup just being a sampler and two synths, everything had to be sampler-based forever and I knew that one day we’d want to do more than that. Now that we have Ben and I’m on guitar, the sampler can still take centre stage but it can also just be a drum machine, leaving me and Ben to write stuff too. That’s how ‘White Socks Yellow’ came about, Ben showed us that bassline on his first ever practice with us and the song was fully written within like half an hour before we’d even decided to let him join the band yet.

YAANG: ‘If it’s not fun, then it’s pointless.”

Your music has taken a step away from mostly ‘electronic’ instruments (synths, drum machines etc.) towards the use of guitars, basses and so on – what sparked the move?

O.D: Our music is way more fun to write now, just because, now that I’m on guitar instead of keys, things come to me quicker. I have more of an instinct with the guitar, it’s like a language I can understand and speak, whereas with the keys I could only really understand it but couldn’t speak it. There was a period last summer when I was seriously considering quitting the band because I felt I had so much more to offer than what I was offering, but didn’t see a way to get to a place as a band where I could offer more, until one day me and Davey just said: “fuck it, lets just put you on guitar and see what happens.” Conveniently, later that same month, Ben asked to join the band and I instantly saw it working.

Your new single ‘White Socks Yellow’ contains a dash of your signature humour. How important is it for the three of you to have a laugh, both whilst writing and performing your music?

D.M: Humour is such a powerful tool for processing strong emotions and difficult times. It’s something that has always helped, especially in a creative context. There have definitely been times where we become all serious due to industry pressure, but that just leads to a wall of creative block. Word of advice for other bands. If you feel like you aren’t getting anywhere creatively, write a stupid song that makes you laugh. Maybe a penguin could take over parliament or a broken appendage could shapeshift into a cantaloupe only to be eaten by an Albanian oligarch. The content is irrelevant but yeah have a go, It will change the game. And that concludes my ted talk.

O.D: If it’s not fun then it’s pointless. We like to goof.

From the lyrics alone, I presume there’s a solid story behind ‘White Socks Yellow’, do you mind sharing it?

D.M: For the past year, I’ve been helping to run AATMA which is a music venue in the Northern Quarter in Manchester. While working here I have seen every corner of drinking culture: the good, the bad, the ugly. ‘White Socks Yellow’ was my way of channelling the chaos of the Manchester’s music scene into a condensed little nugget of joy and sorrow. I like to try and contrast dark subject matter with funny anecdotes. It would be easy to take the song at face value and think it’s just about being drunk. However, if you listen it’s on about a guy who’s become that inebriated that he has lost his phone, fallen out with his girlfriend and pissed on and off everyone around him without even realising. We’ve all been there and all regretted it. I certainly have. 

What can we expect from YAANG in the coming months? Any big shows coming up that you’re excited for?

O.D: We’re gonna be on tour from March 29th-April 2nd. Bristol, Birmingham, London, Leeds, and then Fair Play Festival in Manchester. It’s gonna be a big ol’ hootenanny.

Listen to YAANG on Spotify and pick up your tickets for Fair play Festival HERE.