NEW NOISE: YACHT

The Knife may be taking three years off to pursue parenthood and DJing, but fans of computer pop can relax: Portland duo YACHT, helmed by couple Jona Bechtolt and Claire Evans, will more than fill the void for music lovers seeking digital dance gems.

Their new album, See Mystery Lights, is solid electro-dance. There’s “Psychic City,” with its sing-along ‘eye yah yah yah’ refrain and Mac pop-up dialog box sound effects. ‘Waste of Time‘ finds Evans’ staid vocals glossed in thumping rhythms. Then there’s “Summer Song,” (download it HERE for free) the track that puts any doubt to rest that this is a DFA-approved and supported act.

Jona may be best known for his electronic projects like YACHT and The Blow, but its punk and grunge-rock like Nirvana that piqued his interest in music.

“I grew up in Astoria, a small fishing town in Oregon like Aberdeen, where Nirvana’s from,” says Jona. “So to see a band come out of the same circumstances that I was living in was awesome.” (Fun fact: Astoria’s also where classic movies ‘The Goonies,’ ‘Short Circuit,’ and ‘Free Willy‘ were filmed.)

His tastes shifted and he began embracing electronic a, intrigued by the concept of “trying to bring the punk spirit into computers.” In 2003, he began recording songs under the YACHT moniker. (YACHT is an acronym for Young Americans Challenging Higher Technology. It serves as homage to a strange-sounding afterschool institute in northern Portland where children were taught to simultaneously embrace and revile technology).

A year after playing a show with Claire’s L.A. noise band, the two reconnected through friends and began dating. Jona spent three years collaborating with fellow Oregonian Mikhaela Maricich in The Blow, the arty electronic-dance band known for tracks like ‘Parentheses‘ and ‘True Affection.’ After two records, he left to concentrate full-time on YACHT with Claire, who, after singing on tracks for YACHT’s 2007 album, I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real, had become a full-fledged member.

The two headed to Marfa, Texas to record their current album See Mystery Lights. The title is a reference to a paranormal optical phenomenon, the Marfa Mystery Lights.

“It’s just these lights in the sky that happen pretty consistently,” Jona says. “They look as if the stars fell out of the sky, so certain orbs of light are hovering. They get really low to the desert ground, they float around and connect with each other and separate. They’ve sent out multiple teams of scientists around the world trying to figure out exactly what they are – and no one has the end-all hypothesis. It’s so rare. We were honored to be with the lights and feel them and be a part of them. We knew we had to move to Marfa and be a part of it.”

The duo drew inspiration from other sources as well, primarily religious movements.

“We’re really interested in the peripheries of religious culture: Scientology, Heaven’s Gates, the Branch Davidians,” Claire says.

Exploring and researching these fringe movements resulted in ‘the breadcrumb’ of the first version of the album.

“We were trying to boil down all of these messages and inspirations from all these religious movements and cults into songs and mantras,” Jona says. “The first version is weird and repetitive, single lines repeated over and over.”

See Mystery Lights came to sound like it currently does — a bit more pop-palatable and dance-ish — thanks to those godfathers of electro-rock, the DFA. After The Blow released Paper Television in 2006, Jona had begun emailing with them about swapping remixes with Jonathan Galkin, who runs the label alongside James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy.

When LCD Soundsystem began their North American tour for Sounds of Silver, the support act couldn’t get a work visa, so Jona stepped in.

“It was really crazy and we became best friends immediately,” he says. “They were really interested in what I was doing, and kept their eye on me. So I gave them the mantra record and they were like, ‘we really love these messages and the concept, we think it’s almost like a Bible of sorts.’ But they challenged us. They were like, ‘we love your pop music. Can you try turning the mantras into pop songs and build a pop structure around them?’ It was taking something from its core and turning it around.”

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