As a poet, author, singer, and producer, Yaya Bey is eclecticism personified. With last year’s LP Madison Tapes and this year’s EP The Things I Can’t Take With Me, the New York-based artist established a distinct musical vocabulary that involves sampled recordings organically weaved together: an understatedly powerful backdrop for candid personal experiences, stolen moments, and lucid epiphanies. Her compositions and words often contain multiple dimensions meant to be interpreted by different circles of people.
As it turns out, those projects were shorter-term deviations from a much bigger overarching album project Bey has been working on for several years. We may or may not have gotten the first glimpse of this material with her new single “made this on the spot”. Structureless and adorned with gleaming strings (courtesy of fellow artist V.C.R.) and aquatic synths, Bey marries tender sounds with piercing admissions.
Though more polished production-wise than her more recent previous recordings, to balance things out, Bey’s lyrics are a little more oblique than usual on “made this on the spot”. “It’s a song that’s still pretty painful to talk about,” she comments. “It’s a confusing situation honestly. Relationships go through so many transitions and the in-between phases can be really difficult. That’s the best I can say about this song.”
Listen to “made this on the spot” in the video below, and find it on other streaming services.
The song is distributed by Ninja Tune offshoot Big Dada Records, though no official album or EP has been announced yet. You can find Yaya Bey on Bandcamp, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
