Brooklyn duo
Yvette were born out of the same spirit of lawless, improbable experimentation that gave way to the rise of technicolor psych pop magicians like
HEALTH and
Animal Collective. Armed with samplers, cheesy keyboard presets, unfashionable guitar effects, and more than ample amounts of delay, bands like this offered a rewired look at pop music where mismatched elements clashed and succeeded in new ways and inspired countless acts to throw out the rule book. While
Yvette started down this path somewhat in 2009 with murky, noise-heavy sampledelia, something happened before the release of their debut album, Process. Where their earliest tracks were always clouded with electronic murk, there was a subtle brightness and implied positivity to the sound, one that is not just absent from, but completely inverted on, Process. Drawing more on the sect of their influences that includes This Heat's lean experimentalism,
Throbbing Gristle's industrial darkness, and even hints of
Skinny Puppy's guitar-based throb, Process is a far uglier creation than
Yvette's hazy beginnings. Powered by drummer Rick Daniel's booming and tribal percussion, the songs meld a primal live recording feel with far more synthetic elements of inhuman noise, sequenced keyboards, and singer Noah Kardos-Fein's vocals, ranging from throaty crooning to pained howls. The wild stabs of metallic synthesizers and brittle guitars of "Mirrored Walls" mesh with repetitive, mind-numbing percussion to evoke some otherworldly version of early experiments by
Liars, while the melodies buried deep within tunes like "Carbon Copy" and "Tempered Glass" marry the band's early
HEALTH influences to the crashy recklessness and sharp tones of the band's industrial influences. Process is far from a sun-drenched soak in positive ambience, but its most interesting moments come when those early psyched-out pop influences butt up against the band's far more aggressive and brutal expressions to create something fully grating but completely unignorable. ~ Fred Thomas