Deriving their name from one of Can‘s best known — and perhaps most covered — songs, Montréal-based experimentalists Yoo Doo Right — Justin Cober (guitar, synths, vocals), Charles Masson (bass) and John Talbot (drums, percussion) — pair noisy and melodic guitar lines, effects-laden synthesizer soundscapes, deep bass grooves and furious and driving percussion into sprawling, cathartic musical pieces that draw inspiration from post-rock, krautrock, shoegaze, classical music, electroacoustics and musique concrète.
Since their formation back in 2016, the Montréal-based trio have been prolific: Their first two EPs 2016’s Nobody Panicked and Everybody Got On and 2017’s EP2 served to introduced the band’s signature bombastic approach to psychedelia. Their 7″ split with Japanese experimentalists Acid Mothers Temple saw the trio adopting a decidedly motorik feel. The Canadian trio’s full-length debut, 2021’s Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose saw the band further establishing an undeniable sound while receiving praise from the likes of Paste Magazine, who wrote “sometimes vigorous and verging on total collapse and sometimes delicate and measured [ . . .] a gift that never stops giving.”
Their Polaris Prize long-listed sophomore album, 2022’s A Murmur, Boundless to the East received praise from AllMusic, who wrote “Yoo Doo Right are skilled at employing restraint, but when they let themselves go, it feels truly earth-shaking” and Flood Magazine‘s Stephan Boissonneault writing “The post-everything krautrockers’ sophomore album is a towering release fit for nebulous contemplation and feelings of foreboding astral projection.”
Released earlier this year, The Sacred Fuck EP was a sonic departure that saw the acclaimed tiro experimenting with found sound, field recordings and sonic collage, momentarily straying away from the high-decibel eardrum shattering sound they’re best known for.
During that same period, they’ve become a highly in-demand live act that has toured across North America, including a making the rounds of the festival circuit with sets at Levitation, M for Montréal, Sled Island, Pop Montreal and New Colossus Festival. The Canadian experimentalists have opened for Acid Mothers Temple, DIIV, A Place to Bury Strangers, Wooden Shjips, Kikagkiu Moyo, FACS, Frigs, and Jessica Moss and a growing list of others.
The Montréal-based outfit’s third album, the Seth Manchester-produced From The Heights of Our Pastureland is slated for a November 8, 2024 release through Mothland. Recorded at Pawtucket-based Machines with Magnets, From The Heights or Our Pastureland is reportedly an honest and patient sonic poem about the destructive process of unbridled expansion in the name of “progress,” that expansion’s inevitable collapse and what it means to rebuild. The album sees the trio further developing ideas they previously started exploring, while creating what’s arguably one of their darkest, heaviest and ominous batch of material to date.
The trio wrote the material in a remote cabin near Saguenay, QC last winter. Snowed in, Cober, Masson and Talbot played for three days straight, archiving anything and everything, musing about “the storm of colonialism, the collapse of capitalism and the massive undertaking it is to rebuild with past mistakes taken into deep consideration.” Fittingly, the album draws major inspiration from parallels drawn between natural phenomena ranging from climate change-related bad weather to environmental disasters and the overwhelming force of our sociopolitical frameworks. Also informed by the commodification of art, AI and algorithmic art, the trio later revisited the album’s material, altering their initial compositions by way of element juxtaposition and extensive sound design. The album sees the band embracing their penchant for sonic manipulation in all of its forms while achieving an uncanny equilibrium between unresolved tensions and soothing resolutions throughout.
“We aimed for something cinematic, but not in the way of a score, rather something more experiential. We wanted to create music that could ignite drive in oneself, hopefully something of significance in and of itself,” the band says. “While we’re really not here to force understanding on people, for us the predominant themes are anxiety and patience, the storm of colonialism, the collapse of capitalism and the massive undertaking it is to rebuild with past mistakes taken into deep consideration. It draws a parallel between natural disaster and social disaster, the experience of watching an impending destructive storm roll in and watching an impending societal disaster unfold under our current colonial, capitalistic frameworks. Hopefully, folks can give themselves time to make some sensible thoughts of the album on their own.”
The album’s second and latest single, the sprawling “Eager Glacier” is anchored around a propulsive and thunderous drum beat, whirring synths, layers of swirling shoegazer-like guitar textures that build up to a brewing and malevolent storm. Featuring elements of post rock, drone, metal and shoegaze, “Eager Glacier” manages to feel like a natural phenomenon, much like a glacier breaking apart at the seams, while possessing a cinematic quality.
“I’ve recently embraced the surrealist and absurdist in me, and this project reflects my desire to blur the lines between reality and the subconscious,” the video’s director Stacy Lee explains. ” Inspired by my recent deep dive into experimental cinema, I’ve come to see genres as fluid—cinema, like music, exists on a continuum, and my work is an ongoing exploration of that entire range. This video doesn’t follow a traditional narrative but instead invites viewers into a space where they can create their own meaning. Through visual experimentation, I wanted to transport us into another dimension, where magic literally unfolds on screen.”