Yosa Peit’s debut LP, Phyton, is one of this year’s most characterful and forward-thinking albums. In a year where many have found their gaze restricted to within their front doors, Peit imagines a future whose fuel is hope and togetheness.
—
Production on Phyton is noticeably more adventurous than in 2015’s Constellation. What has influenced approach to songwriting/production in those five years?
Yeah I agree. I think it has to do with both, these rollercoaster times and learning about sound. Constellation was the first record I produced. People had known me as a singer before, and it’s taken time to trust my process of producing. On this full-length debut I wanted to make something that you could really feel. It’s a searching sound. You hear a lot of ticking, getting kicked out of a structure, roaring guitar and harsh vocal processing set against a Dolphins-in-Malibu kinda song like Curls. Life in the past few years has felt very much like those sonic contrasts for me, so I took all those feelings and put them together my own way. In my head I was making a movie. It was like growing a strange plant in new political, social, environmental climates really. That is why I called it Phyton.
The vocal treatment lives in bit of a Genesis world, weirdly. I rediscovered my voice through singing with the Holly Herndon ensemble folks, and took to using it more. I finished the record in a new studio home in Neukölln amongst friends who ended up putting out Phyton as a multi-channel family effort. It’s a world of wonky, jungly, experimental analogue and digital in there. I’m stoked to see where it’s taking me next.
Phyton is set to become an interdisciplinary collection of pieces by various artists—can you go into some detail on how you found collaborators for this project?
Phyton is an experiment on growth. It’s about process. Phyton means “plant,” “tree,” “creature,” “child,” and “descendant” in ancient Greek. It comes from “phúō,” i.e. “to generate, to grow, to spring up, to be by nature”. I was intrigued how Phyton could link child and plant, descendant and tree. So I started to reach outside of music. Honestly, I had no idea where this would lead. It was like going outside as a child to see who else is out to play.
I wrote to four Berlin based artists who work with clay, the earthiest of materials, and free form to create ceramic artworks within the etymology of phyton. It’s a coincidence that the word phyton contains -ton, which means clay and sound in German, but it supported the idea to create something with this material. Most of the artists I met for the first time through writing. Ana Botezatu, Carl Luis, Hella Gerlach, and Zoë Claire Miller all had close links to plants. They were keen on the idea. It seemed to trigger something in their own practice.
Their works sprung up after listening to the record. Ana formed Goddesses For Moonless Nights, Carl made Vases with different shapes of gestures, Hella further developed a previous series of Hangovers, friends hanging around your neck, and Zoë is making porcelain necklaces formed from leaves we collected in the forest. She attaches human sensory body part elements to them. It’s all super playful!
I’ve also worked with a costume designer on creating a giant venus fly trap Muppet costume we named Fuzzy Phy in homage to Jim Henson. I go out and interact with people on the street in it. It’s Augmented Analog Reality in public space.
The artworks and Fuzzy Phy were shown at our release show Phyland just now. We’ll make the artworks available in different forms, and find ways to archive this growth. The project will continue into a sound garden, a place for listening and future collaboration in 2021.
Does the “interspecies garden” represent a future utopia? How can its lessons be applied to the wider world?
I think we live in an interspecies garden already. We can reconfigure our imagination and go offline to start noticing and interacting with it. We’re right inside it. I see Phyton as a small experiment that’s part of a Social Change Ecosystem.
The Phyton release show took place in a giant hall. We placed artworks on mounted earth, hanging plants and long succulents were hanging from the high ceiling, sticky candles lit the shiny glazed sculptures in front of my synth, creatures peeking from a hydraulic ramp, rabbit tail flowers in a vase next to Ludwig (who is my tombak and synth player). A friend wore the Fuzzy Phy costume, sat amongst the audience and applauded. There was a strong connection between everything and everyone in the room.
Street performances with Fuzzy Phy are also part of this interspecies experiment that make it become real. Humans react differently when they see a giant purple, furry Phytrap walk past their window. They feel joy, maybe akwardness, irritation. But they interact and connect with this plantlike creature. It can free up the mind.
Music is both a gateway and a translator in this sense. Maybe it can bring you closer. We can put anything in different contexts, engage with our environment in a completely different way. Put the phone down and look around. It isn’t as much about the result as it is about the slow sloping growth of tiny new leaves and ideas in this interspecies garden.
And who needs these lessons the most?
It’s good to start on your own doorstep.
In a recent interview, Autechre clarified (contrary to what most people think) that their music is composed, rather than procedurally generated by computers. As someone who worked with Holly Herndon on Proto, do you think there is a difference?
Holly is really the pro to ask here. I relate to the human side in Proto and its raising of important questions on the future of pop culture and human/machine interaction. Hardly anyone in my closer environment knows what machine learning is, how computers run, what’s inside their phones. I see this everytime I teach in schools. How do as many people get that kind of education in order to participate in these discussions and make informed decisions in their future? That’s also why I work with kids: to explore with them what the relationship between our senses and computers is, and can be.
Could you detail your work at „Error Music – don’t delete”? What are some of the greatest obstacles for female and non-binary children’s engagement with music technology? And how can people help?
Error Music is a sound and tech edu format I initiated here in Berlin. We work inside schools and youth institutions across Berlin outskirts and at ACUD, a Berlin arthouse and performance space. Every edition is a mix of sound design, hacking, error culture and performance, to boost the confidence of teenage girls and queer trans kids in participating in a sound and tech future. We playfully explore the relationship between sound, technology and our senses. We dive into electronic music making, computing and its female pioneers. The “error music” term takes a lot of the pressure off, and replaces expectation with new ideas because nothing is or sounds wrong. It’s so cool how kids loose their fear of making up sound, engaging with tech and living the mistakes. They just go for it.
I wish this format was for everyone, and hope it will be in the near future. I’ve realized in my past years of working with teenagers that girls or qt kids need a different access to approach technology and sound production—still in 2020. It’s crazy. They often find it harder to start coding for example, they are still told they can’t do something sometimes, or that it’s not their thing—even by some of their teachers. We try to break patterns. Everyone can pay attention to how we talk about technology, music and biases. It’s often just one phrase or word in a sentence that makes a difference.
Phyton seems such an optimistic project, with an apparent focus on growth and unity. How do we nurture these things in a society which emphasises division, uncertainty and fear?
This project feels like a small scale attempt to open up dialogues, meet new people, make things, collaborate. But it’s still a bubble of like-minded folk. I think we need to keep having conversations with people who don’t think alike, and to not let consumption of media and algorithms take us over. Talk to a stranger, call a relative that has different opinions, encourage dialogue.
‘Leaf’ I and II, and ‘Palm Tree Antenna’ are all notably brief with botanical names. What motivated these short, minimal, almost interstitial pieces?
I dreamed up a Coen Brothers movie scene when I made the leaves. There is the term seed leaf–the very first leaf of a plant that pushes out of the ground. After that true leaves grow a fully matured plant. But those names seemed way too nerdy...funny you ask, never thought I’d get to tell anyone.
I have a collection of Palm Tree Antennas—Cell Phone Towers disguised as Trees, Pines, Palm Trees, Cacti. Their story, and the companies behind building the trees are super fascinating. Why do humans disguise our main communication system as trees? I thought Antenna Palm Tree was a good name for the last tune since it’s about my phone camera, with the lyrics “eyes as good as none”.
Phyton at some points feels like an 80s throwback—‘New Stars’ in particular sounds like something off Graceland. Why are we so collectively captivated with the music of that time?
Ha, I never thought of the New Stars/Graceland connection. I’ve probalby listened to Graceland a gazillion times in my dad’s car as a kid. Didn’t know it was so obvious! I learned late that Paul Simon went to record in South Africa despite the UN boycott. That record is my first musical memory alongside Carole King, Aretha Franklin and Steve Windwood. What we hear as kids sinks in deeply, I think it becomes part of your sonic fabric. My 80s/90s childhood was naïve as fuck. It felt carefree, in the sense that things seemed optimistic. But it struck me that even 12-year-old Error Music kids sang Gloria Estefan’s mid-80s tune ‘Conga’ last week…
I’m actually not keen on too much nostalgia, and I don’t know why we still collectively fall for warm synth pads. But maybe there is something in the “taking you back to bring you forward” combination.
What setup did you use to create Phyton’s uniquely organic sound?
Most of the record is made mostley with a Roland SK-88 Pro Sound Canvas, my Bass and bird sounds I taped in Mexico. The set-up is super simple. The vocals for Curls are recorded into my laptop mic. I didn’t use a tonne of gear, I prefer working with limited options so I can focus on the “inside” of tunes.
Are there any artists you would like to shout out, local to you or otherwise?
That’s hard! Here are some core people, but they are many I really dig at the moment. From the xyz here are some: Albertine Sarges, Am Kinem, BBF, Benjamin Tierney, Colin Self, Employee, FMcGv, Glenn Astro, Jürgen R., Nauker, Perera Elsewhere, Rahel Süßkind, 2Morph, UCC Harlo, and Karol Kaye...
Phyton is available for purchase and streaming here.
Interview: Andrew O’Keefe; Images: Anna Budniewski; Artist Photo: Albertine Sarges