In the ribbon development of the Belgian village of Oud-Rekem, just across the border from Limburg, there is a house with a rather soulless brick facade from the eighties. Behind it lies another world. Behind the front door it appears to be a mayor’s house from 1700: tiled floor, wooden beams, high ceilings. Today it is home to Yīn Yīn, the band of ‘a few rascals from Maastricht’. This means that East Asian sounds are given a psychedelic funk jacket in the crooked Belgian attic.
Upon entering the studio, drummer Kees Berkers lowers the hatch of the attic stairs behind him via a pulley that runs along the high beams. The counterweight is a basket filled with stones. “That’s the first thing we made here.” After all, a studio must be able to close, sound leaks through a stairwell.
Came here Mount Matsu from writing process to recording and mixing. It is their third album and will be released this week. An album with almost all instrumental songs, sometimes with a Dick Dale-like surf sound or angular Krafwerk synths, sometimes disco and soul, but always full of sounds borrowed from Thai sixties songs and Japanese and Chinese traditions.
The building belongs to the mother of bassist Remy Scheren, but they can use it when they renovate the place. So last year Berkers took up his trowel and took care of the old walls – Goldband is not the only plastering band in the Netherlands. Not an easy job, everything is slanted and crooked. Scheren: “It represents how we approach things. We could have straightened that wall, but it is part of such an old house that it is now a bit Harry Potter-like crooked. Also in this studio we don’t necessarily have the right expensive equipment, we do it by feeling.” The imbalance is also reflected in their band name, not the balance of Yin Yang, but twice the feminine Yin.
Berkers made a booth for his drum kit from bamboo and elastic, wallpapering it with moltons and the remaining insulation material from the walls to absorb the echoes. “You can do one of those drum booth also buy it for ten thousand euros, but we don’t have that. That may sound better, but I actually prefer to sit in my own bamboo hut.”
Cat claws
Prominent in the room is the guzheng, a Chinese harp that none of the four band members know exactly how to play, but which can be heard on almost every song on the album. Often simply by running your finger along the pentatonic tuned strings, the scale that sounds ‘oriental’ to western ears. “Our guitarist Erik (Bandt, ed.) can do a little more with it,” says Berkers, “but you actually have to play it with those cat claws.” He opens a compartment in the sound box in which there are some kind of fake nails, still in the cellophane. The musician must stick these on the fingers like picks. “YouTube is full of videos of people who can do that really well.”
Yīn Yīn stands in the same tradition as the Dutch exotica of Jungle By Night and Altin Gun. Such music, Scheren calls it global groove, can hardly be heard in and around Maastricht. “We really rarely go to concerts in our own city.” To change that, they will kick off their album tour at the end of this month with a self-curated festival at the Muziekgieterij in Maastricht where they program Japanese-Belgian house, Latin, Arabic music and Afrobeat.
The even deeper isolation of the studio in Oud-Rekem was deliberately chosen, says Scheren. “An island like that makes it difficult, but it promotes your authenticity.” That approach is catching on. With their previous album they played almost a hundred shows in one year, throughout Europe. Mount Matsu builds on that success. Next week they will be at Eurosonic Noorderslag for the fifth year in a row and in February they will go on a two-month European tour to Slovenia and Hungary.
Do you ever get reactions from the Asian countries where you get your inspiration?
Scheren: “Yes, actually always very positive. There was a message recently from a girl who said she heard our music in a big shopping center in Shanghai. That’s bizarre, isn’t it? It’s really cool that people appreciate it there too.”
You’ve never played there before?
Scheren: “That will happen this year. We can go to Fuji Rock, a very big festival in Japan. Then we go to China and maybe South Korea.”
Yīn Yīn is often compared to Khruangbin, the popular American band that also makes instrumental music with mainly Thai influences. They are sometimes accused of ‘cultural appropriation’, the appropriation of a culture that is not your own. Doesn’t Yīn Yīn do that too?
Scheren: “I think it’s not too bad. We receive almost only positive reactions. Cultural appropriation is borrowing a culture and simplifying it without doing proper research and then converting it into a strong economic product. That is not what happens with us at all. It’s really our love for the depth of that music. I hope we build a bridge, as sensitively as possible. We don’t want to offend anyone, but as always with art, you may of course step on someone’s toes. That could also have happened if we made punk.”
Previously you performed in kimonos and were photographed wearing rice hats.
Berkers: “At one point we thought: maybe we should stop doing that, that is not appropriate. It also seems as if it is becoming stricter about what is and is not allowed. But now we no longer feel ourselves comfi in kimonos.”
You made the first tape under the name Ladyboys, a reference to Thai trans people who also work in the tourist sex industry.
Berkers: “We are not happy with that. As a band we immediately adapted it to Yīn Yīn. It is also a learning process for us.”
On the new album the focus is more on Japan than on Thailand. Why the shift?
Berkers: “I have always had a fascination with Japan. Then it is about architecture, philosophy, literature, fashion and of course music. It all has a fairly simplistic aesthetic. I also love the samurai movies and the anime that comes from there, it almost becomes a fantasy place that you almost forget it’s on the same planet. Fuji Rock will be our first visit to Japan.”
Scheren: “That whole culture and history is a learning path. But of course we are not historians. We are musicians who focus on performing that music beautifully.”
Berkers: “In Japan they have a tradition of puppet theaters accompanied by music. One new song, “Year of the Tiger,” is based on that idea. Guitarist Erik plays the established order, a village with its own culture. Remy and I arrive there with drums and bass like strangers. First there is friction and distrust, then a new connection arises. We would like to work in this narrative way more often.”
What is the overarching story of the new album?
Berkers: “That is our journey of discovery, to find a sound with the four of us. I mainly recorded the previous two albums with our old guitarist Yves (Lennertz, ed). He is no longer there.”
Lennertz still made the previous album, but played live no longer with it. What happened?
Berkers: “I’m not going to say too much about it. We have had a very difficult period. We both noticed that it wasn’t working anymore. By the way, he will come to our festival with his new band.”
Are you a band that can sometimes be loud?
Berkers: “That is not in our nature. We remain a bit shy Limburgers. It’s more likely that we’re keeping it inside for too long.”
Scheren: “We are now also taking more distance from each other as a precaution. Lately we have both often been visiting our girlfriends in Maastricht, instead of here in Oud-Rekem. Otherwise we’re just too close to each other.”
The song is also on the new album ‘The Year of the Rabbit’, which in China more or less coincides with 2023. Will the New Year of the Dragon, which starts on February 10, be the year of Yīn Yīn?
Scheren: “Oh, it has already gone further than I ever thought. At festivals we appear on the poster with bands such as The Strokes and Black Eyed Peas. Then we have come a long way for a few little guys from Maastricht.”