About

On their fourth album Yatta!, the celebrated Dutch quartet YĪN YĪN extends, bends, and ignites a joyous mix of disco, funk, surf, psychedelia, and Southeast Asian motifs. UNCUT magazine previously dubbed their highly addictive sound “cosmic disco”—a fitting starting point—but as Yatta! proves, the band's sonic footprint is an ever-evolving kaleidoscope of sounds, textures, and beats.

As with their breakthrough album Mount Matsu (2024), their devotion to getting the dance floor moving remains front and center. That impulse, already strong, has intensified — Yatta! lifting it to an ecstatic next level.

The result? An album that reveals a band whose groove just keeps getting deeper.

The opening track on YĪN YĪN’s new album, Yatta!, begins with a sample of the philosopher Alan Watts expounding: “There is no Yang without Yin and no Yin without Yang.”

Appropriately enough, the track – a jubilantly upbeat slice of disco action – is called “In Search of Yang,” and begs a question about the meaning of the group’s name. The group’s drummer and co-founder, Kees Berkers, explains: “Yin Yang is about balance between two different forces and Yin Yin would essentially mean two negative forces that cannot reach a common ground. So, YĪN YĪN is about finding a balance in the unbalanced.”

Certainly, over the last six years, the quartet from Maastricht in the south of the Netherlands has built a reputation for balancing an eclectic range of influences and using them to forge something that is affectionately retro and, at the same time, fresh and forward-facing.

The group’s origins lie in an experimental jam session in a remote village ballet school in 2017, leading to the release of the single, “Dion Ysiusk,” the following year. The debut album, The Rabbit That Hunts Tigers was released in 2019, followed by The Age of Aquarius in 2022. After a few personnel changes, the quartet’s line-up had, by 2023, arrived at its current form of Kees Berkers (drums), Remy Scheren (bass), Jerôme Scheren (keyboards) and Erik Bandt (guitar). 2024 saw the release of Mount Matsu, now followed by the group’s most complete statement to date, Yatta!

From the beginning, YĪN YĪN have been devoted to exploring global sounds with an emphasis on getting the dance floor moving – an impulse that reaches its peak on Yatta!

One major influence is the sound of Italo Disco – the spacey brand of disco music that arose in Italy in the late 1970s. “It has something of a mystique,’ says Berkers. “All the producers were using new recording techniques and effects, but there are not many pictures or videos of how they were creating things in the studio. You have to use your own fantasy and create your own story about how that music is created.” You can hear that sense of mystery on tracks like “In Search of Yang,” with its endless groove and trippy backwards guitar effects.

Across the album, YĪN YĪN specialise in creating the soundtracks to dream journeys, opportunities for the listener to visit places that exist in realms of the imagination.

“That’s a big reason why the music’s instrumental,” Berkers confirms. “It leaves a lot of room for the listener to fill in the gaps. You can really make your own trip of it. It’s very movie-like.” And it’s not just the movies we get to visit. “Kasumi’s Quest” is built around a mysteriously ascending and descending synth figure, coming come across like the music to a lost computer game – “an imaginary quest of an imaginary character in an imaginary world,” says Berkers. “It could be like a difficult quest in a dungeon, and Kasumi could be the character that you’re playing.”

If there’s a general direction of travel in YĪN YĪN’s expeditions, it’s towards the east, with Asian influences coming through loud and clear. “Lecker Song” feels like a 1960s Japanese soul-funk spy movie theme with a sample of a koto buried in the mix. “Yata Yata” could be the throbbing disco soundtrack to a Thai spaghetti western. “Night in Taipei” is an atmospheric ballad summoning a fragrant evening in the Taiwanese capital, and “Pattaya Wrangler” suggests a sundown stroll on the Thai city’s golden beaches.

It's a fascination that has suffused YĪN YĪN’s sound since, in the early days, they stumbled upon a couple of compilation albums of psychedelic 60s and 70s guitar music from Southeast Asia. “Those albums had the most influence on that East Asian route we took,” Berkers recalls. “Via those compilations, we got to YouTube channels where we couldn't read anything because everything was in Thai letters or in Chinese symbols – and that felt like we found the treasure!’”

Adopting Eastern tunings has imparted an unusual feel to YĪN YĪN’s music and challenged them as songwriters.

Berkers explains: “If you're making music for a long time you get to some points where you think ‘I'm always doing the same thing.’ And then a simple YouTube channel or a compilation can give you that spark you need!”

There’s no shortage of sparks in Yatta!’s blend of dancefloor fillers and laidback soundscapes. Guitarist Erik Bandt explains: “We tried to make a mix of songs that are very energetic, danceable party starters, but also have songs that take you on trips and are more easy.”

Underpinning all of this is a welcoming, natural feel, with everything recorded directly to tape.

“It’s our most organic album to date,” says Bandt. “We recorded together as a team in the studio instead of recording separate tracks for drums, guitar, bass – it’s all live and that adds a certain feel.”

All of which explains the album’s title. Bandt says: “Yatta is a Japanese phrase meaning ‘We did it, we accomplished it!’ After we finished the album, we thought this simple phrase actually ties it all together.” Berkers continues: “It also speaks for a more general idea that we, as a band, succeeded to really become a band on a professional level. So, it's also, ‘We finally are true musicians now. We have arrived.’ Basically, we made the dream come true.”

Yatta! Is the sound of four musicians finding their own globe-trotting groove, and having the time of their lives exploring it. Lucky for us, we’re invited too. — (via Label)

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In an increasingly cursed world, where producers are turning their backs on crate-digging for vinyl to instead generate samples via artificial intelligence, YĪN YĪN counterpunch by laying down infectious grooves that feel sample-ready—rare and familiar at the same time. The Dutch band’s new album Yatta! incorporates splashes of soul, funk, disco, soft rock, European cinema scores, Eastern instrumentation, with a dash of ABBA for good measure. It’s 1970s Europop, refracted through a psychedelic prism. Every song is stuffed with fantastical elements—a surf music guitar lead here, a heavy drum break there. It’s a sense of unifying purpose that binds the set together.

Yatta!, YĪN YĪN’s fourth album, opens with reflection on the band’s name. It begins with an audio clip of counterculture philosopher Alan Watts explaining the ancient Chinese idea of contrary yet complementary forces: “There is no yang without yin and no yin without yang.” Or, as drummer and co-founder Kees Berkers explains in press notes, YĪN YĪN “is about finding a balance in the unbalanced.” The result is a set of multi-layered instrumentals that draw upon a thousand influences, co-existing in great harmony.

Take the one-two combination of the back-to-back singles. Though Yatta! is almost all instrumental, “Spirit Adapter” does incorporate a few lyrics, with bassist Remy Scheren firing off enjoyable jabber like, “The room’s alive, the walls are shaking/ Transform me like a spirit adapter” over a smoothly bumping disco-ball groove that also speaks to a strand of ’00s indie-psych as well as bands such as Monogold and DOM. It’s immediately followed by the thicker, analog funk of “Lecker Song.” It’s impressive eclecticism that gives the impression of a magical weekend jam session.

The genre-hopping never lets up. The dinky beeps and whimsical synths of “Kasumi’s Quests” are inspired by retro video games, calling to mind the scrolling pixels of a phantasmagoric two-dimensional world; “Night in Taipei,” meanwhile, has the lustrous sweep of a scene from 1970s flick set in the Taiwanese capital. Often, there’s variety within the same song: “Slow Burner” features minimalist percussion reminiscent of old-school hip-hop, which is eventually washed over by vibey electro riffs and warbling guitar lines. With so many candy-colored components wired together by a band in perfect accord, Yatta! is a combination of ingenuity and easy-breeziness that’s easy to fall for. — (via Bandcamp Review)

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If you were alive and working anywhere remotely cool in 2019, you without a doubt were exposed to the psychedelic stylings of Yin Yin‘s first album The Rabbit That Hunts Tigers via Pandora or whatever the fuck we used to use back then. “One Inch Punch” played so often at the hair salon I was at that I almost began to resent it, but would eventually relent and realize the Dutch foursome’s wiggly tunes were actually really good. Rabbit got a ton of coverage both online and on live radio, and sent Yin Yin into the relative stratosphere popularity-wise. Things seemed to be trending upwards for the group–that is, until COVID hit less than a year later, delaying their tour. While the lockdown did lead to their second album The Age of Aquarius, I can’t help but feel like Yin Yin had a bit of an aborted lift-off. Aquarius didn’t quite hit for me, nor did 2024’s Mount Matsu, which introduced a distinctly Japanese influence on the overall sound.

Mount Matsu did leave me intrigued, though, and I was hopeful that Yatta! would build upon that new angle and let it cook more. Fortunately, I was correct, and Yatta! is their best work since their debut. This record is an excellent return to form as well as a musical step forward for the band. This is always a hard balance to maintain; having a recognizable sound is important to a group’s identity, but the same dozen songs again and again doesn’t do anyone any good.

The overall ‘vibe’ of Yatta! is that of a retro film score, but one that is playing at a disco club on a projector. The album is highly cinematic throughout, and frequently conjures the image of a black-and-white movie from the 60s set somewhere in Asia. This objectively rules. It’s a fun sonic concept for a record, intentional or not, and extremely immersive for the listener. There’s been a ton of ‘fake vintage’ media in the last five or six years, where a contemporary musician or film director or visual artist takes clear inspiration from older works and faithfully recreates a new version, and Yatta! fits right into this oeuvre.

But Yin Yin delivers with the rest of Yatta!, primarily because the aforementioned groove is so incredibly locked-in. It’s easy for some bands in this sphere to find a good sound and then never do anything else, like the excellent but tragically repetitive Glass Beams (I love Phrygian jamz as much as anyone, but we need another scale here, folks). Yin Yin avoid this by swinging high and utilizing a huge swath of instruments–swirling orchestral violins, East Asian strings, woodwinds, you name it. They also throw in a good amount of disco and funk this time around, which feels like a natural progression from their mega-hit debut. Album opener “In Search of Yang” instantly delivers a disco drum beat overlaid with a catchy-as-anything string melody and funk rhythm guitar strums. We even get something resembling Mort Garson on “Kasumi’s Quest”, complete with oscillating synths. Cool. — (via Everything is Noise)

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Label: Glitterbeat
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Stereo
Released: 2026
Genre: Rock, Funk / Soul, Folk
Style: Psychedelic Rock, Funk, Anatolian Rock

File under: Global Sounds
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