Experimentalist Yves Tumor transverses genre, blurring the boundaries between old influences and the new digital age.
Yves Tumor’s surprise-drop The Asymptotical World EP pulsates with energy and maximalist, neo-psychedelic texture.
Co-produced and engineered by Tumor’s longstanding collaborator Yves Rothman, the EP extends upon Tumor’s experimental rock sound, critically-acclaimed in their 2020 album Heaven to a Tortured Mind.
Tumor’s sound hasn’t ceased mutating since their debut album in 2015, When Man Fails You. Tumor’s last release, Heaven, was perhaps their most approachable album yet.
It fashioned for itself a position beyond the confines of traditional genre, but remained nevertheless familiar, emotional and evocative enough to attract the largest part of Tumor’s audience.
Asymptotical takes Tumor’s musical influences of glam rock and early-mid 2000s alternative, and applies an internet-age sheen. The EP draws from sounds of the past, to create something hauntological and uniquely Tumor’s.
Lead single Jackie was released prior to the EP last month.
The bit-crushed drums on Jackie offend the humanness of the song, veering off into a more digitised sound. Accompanying the single is a visually captivating music video, directed and produced by Actual Objects. It features a DeepFake of the artist, who battles their lover in an otherworldly, animated landscape.
The music video is like a fever dream, effectively communicating the feeling of the EP as a whole, which recounts love through the blood-coloured lenses of obsession and narcissism.
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Its maximalism is evident on tracks like …And Loyalty is a Nuisance child, which harks back to the gothic melodrama of 2000s pop rock. On the track, Tumor’s droning voice collides with the instruments, creating a cacophonic wall of sound that morphs, yet persists, throughout the entire EP.
Tuck, features the ethereal vocals of NAKED’s Agnes Gryzckowska, and calls back to the glitchy dissonance of Crystal Castles. Leaving Gryzckowska to reign the track, Tumor positions themselves as a composer, rather than at the centre stage.
Tumor recruited Chris Greatti to co-produce the EP, who is known for his work with artists including Yungblud, Poppy, Grimes and blink-182. Greatti’s early 2000s rock verisimilitude is evident in Asymptotical, albeit pushed beyond its conventional boundaries.
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Tumor’s lyrics are visceral, unembellished and raw. In Jackie, love is expressed in minimal words that recounts destructive behaviour, “These days have been tragic/I ain’t sleeping/Refuse to eat a thing/I can’t tell you what happened“.
If the EP recounts a story cohesively, it is one of a self-absorbed person whose love is only a reflection of their own ego. That is, they love because they desire to be loved and adored in return. The opening lines reveal a confusion between love and the desire to feel wanted, “Hey, little Jackie/When you wake up/Do you think of me?/I said hey, Jackie, baby/When you rest your mind/Do you think of me?“.
Tuck describes a controlling lover. Sung by Gryzckowska, it may be interpreted as the other’s perspective. The phase “I didn’t die for you/you, you, you” repeats throughout the song, and indicates a reluctance to submit to a possessive lover.
In the final track, Katrina, the EP’s protagonist has lost interest in their lover, “What’s the point?/Why bother?/I can’t remember her face“.
In an interview with Flaunt, Tumor explained that the evolution of their music forced. Rather, they stated, “(a)s soon as I’m done with (a) record, and I have that sound embodied in that physical form, I just don’t want to ever revisit it.”
It is certain that they will continue to upheave boundaries and move into more and more experimentalist terrain.
Tumor will be embarking on their tour of the US, the UK and Europe in September.
Listen to The Asymptotical World below:
