Announcing → “New Release”
The new YACHT album arrives August 23rd...2031.
If you’ve ever showed up early to a movie at a big chain theater, you’ve been exposed the demented piece of pre-show programming either called The 2wenty, FirstLook or Noovie. This program starts by telling the audience what they are about to see—a table of contents, of sorts. Then it shows the audience those contents, which are usually promo segments about new network television shows, and afterwards it wraps things up by telling the audience exactly what it is they just saw. This precap/recap format is optimized for an audience slowly trickling into a theater, but Jona always thought it’d be a funny way to structure a YACHT live show.
How about we use it for this email? Coming up next: we’ll be announcing our new album. We’ll be giving you a first look at its title and release date, sharing details about the artwork, and showing you its tracklist. Finally, we’ll invite you to a special, entirely unrelated event happening this Saturday in Los Angeles.
WE HAVE A NEW ALBUM
You knew it was coming. We, the band YACHT, have a new album coming out August 23rd. We humbly demand that you follow us on Spotify or favorite us on Apple Music in advance of that date. This small action will ensure you’re notified when the album arrives, and it will juice some behind-the-scenes numbers that tickle the algorithm in our favor. Thank you for doing that!
THE ALBUM TITLE
The album is called New Release. A few months ago we met with a music publicist who we couldn’t afford. When we told him the album title, the first thing he asked was, “is it too late to change it?” This interaction is extremely on-brand for us.
Have we deliberately chosen a title destined to be lost in the SEO churn? No, we just think “New Release” is both funny and appropriate. On a basic level, it is what it is. We love a store that’s just called “Convenient Market,” or a restaurant named after the one special dish it serves. That’s honesty. And honestly, this album is a release. Our last proper album, Chain Tripping was defined by structure; we composed it within very strict constraints. This one is fun, and it was super fun to make.
It also speaks to something practical. New Release is the very first physical release on our private label, Paris by Night. We’ll be releasing it in a very new way. More on that later.
THE ALBUM ART
Once we finished the songs, Jona just knew the album art had to be yellow. It was just one of those things—a new idea that was somehow already a given. Do all ideas already exist somewhere in a parallel dimension? Maybe our job as artists is just to move them over from their dimension of origin and see how they work here. The easy ideas are the ones that come from dimensions so close to ours that they’re already compatible, and the hard ones come from a place so far away that they just won’t stick here. Shrug emoji goes here (in another dimension).
TYPE TALK
Jona hand-drew the ketchup-red New Release. Behind it, in yellow, New Release is laid out in ITC Machine, which you might recognize as the Blockbuster Video font. Jona grew up in a gas station and community video store in rural Oregon. The ruin of video stores was one of the defining events of our generation. It haunts this album, just like it haunts this album cover.
The font we used for the song titles is called Tile Spacer Mono, and it was made by the designer Bryce Wilner’s Fall 2022 Typography Studio class at The New School. Bryce’s students made each letterform by physically arranging those little plastic spacers you use when you lay tile onto a paper grid; Bryce then digitized the letters they made and created this font.
We didn’t know this at first. We were just attracted to the wonky, lo-fi feeling of these letters. When we found out they were collectively created out of trash, we were thrilled. As we told Bryce, that’s what this record is all about. You’ll see.
Here’s more of Tile Spacer Mono:
We also used Bryce’s version of Standard, an open-source typeface available on GitHub here. Bryce actually wrote a fascinating academic article about the hidden history of OFL, the open-source font license. If you’ve read this far, you’re probably the kind of person who would like it!
We also must mention that the little gnat on the album cover is most definitely inspired by the upcoming video game Time Flies, created by our new friends Michael Frei and Raphaël Munoz and published by our old friends Panic. You can wishlist it here if you’re into conceptual video games about insect mortality.
FORMATS
New Release will be available everywhere you stream or download music, and directly from us on limited-edition vinyl and an even more limited-edition cassette. The physical release is going to be special, counterintuitive, and highly personalized. Would you expect anything less? We’ll share more about that soon.
THE TRACKLIST
The Bubbles (Are Running The Bathtub)
Low Technique
Finger In Your Eye
Two Heads
Overboogie
We’re Blowing Out (feat. Jennifer Vanilla)
Manic Panic
Shut Up
Get Ill Soon
Wake Me Up
AUGUST 23RD, 2031
Over 20 years ago our friend and artist Andrew Ritchey (who now runs a wonderful radical bookshop) chose a random date in the future and declared it would be the most important day of his life. This concept resonated with us so much that we internalized it and became inspired to fuck around with time displacement ourselves. Throughout our little career we’ve noticed that people like to tell us we’re “ahead of our time,” which feels generous and mostly positive until we realize that being outside of time is a curse as much as it is a blessing. Of course, the odds of any hard-won piece of art coming out at precisely the right moment to be appreciated on its own level are vanishingly slim. But we’re consoling ourselves by thinking that if people don’t like this record now, people in 2031 are gonna love it.
IN CASE YOU’RE IN LOS ANGELES
This Saturday, July 20th, Claire will be in conversation with Hackers producer Jeff Gleeman and architect and filmmaker Liam Young for a very special 35mm screening of Hackers at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Get tickets here.
TO RECAP
You’ve just read that YACHT has a new album called New Release that comes out August 23rd. You followed us on Spotify or favorited us on Apple Music. You learned about the artwork, typography, and a little about the state of mind of the band that made those choices. You learned that New Release has 10 tracks, one of which features longtime YACHT friend Jennifer Vanilla. Finally, you’ve been invited to a special screening of Hackers on 35mm at the Academy Museum this Saturday.
Enjoy the show!
Love,
Claire, Jona, and Rob
I am excited for new labels that put out new releases in new ways!
This album seems familiar!
Fantastic, can’t wait for the release again.