About — YT//ST

There’s a whole world contained within Yamantaka // Sonic Titan. They’re a Noh-Wave prog collective, a black-and-white (and sometimes red) theatre company, an operatic psych cult, and the speculative prophets of humanity’s impending doom. Above it all, though, they’re a thunderous rock band, and on their third album, DIRT, they’re the heaviest they’ve ever been.

Though they’ve been an amorphous beast since they formed in 2010, DIRT follows the group’s most significant evolution in years. Now totally Toronto-based, they’ve added new singer Joanna Delos Reyes, guitarist Hiroki Tanaka and bassist Brandon Lim, who, along with the towering drums of leader/artist Alaska B, singer/theatre artist Ange Loft and keyboardist Brendan Swanson, turn the group into a driving engine of sound. Live, the band can be sprawling and theatrical or concise and visceral, filling the stage with noise, melody and cacophony.

DIRT is the band’s first album since 2013’s UZU, their second straight to be shortlisted for the Polaris Prize as one of the best Canadian albums of the year. But the gap between albums hasn’t been a hiatus. Instead, the group hunkered down in the studio composing the mostly-instrumental score to the DrinkBox Studios video game Severed, along with members of the Canadian-Filipina gong group Pantayo. They emerged with new elements to heighten and distort into their already far-reaching sound, which combines and tornadoes Asian diasporic and Indigenous influences and perspectives.

The album was conceived as the soundtrack for an unreleased Haudenosaunee and Buddhist themed Anime produced in 1987. Like UZU, it takes place on the planet Pureland, now 10,000 years after the planet has flooded. The surviving people live within bubble domes floating in orbit. A team of mercenaries descends into the drowned wreckage of the world to receive the last sample of uncorrupted soil.

Never abandoning their irreverent edge, the band pushes further into madness and finds clarity in it, combining Iroquois creation myth and Buddhist principles with classic sci-fi themes to show how humanity continues to succumb to its worst impulses: madness, hubris and greed. With a sarcastic sigh that crosses political spectrums, DIRT confronts the lies that we tell ourselves and each other and asks what it means to push forward for an ideal just to die anyway.

Narratively, it’s the most ambitious project they’ve ever done. Musically, though, they’ve streamlined their sound, digging into both heavy and poppy influences like Judas Priest, Killing Joke, and Jordan Knight and translating them into their own unmistakable aesthetic. The live show is still a sensory overload of makeup and costumes that falls somewhere between Boredoms and Kiss, but the focus now is on their sound - the fullest, most killer version they’ve put on record yet. They think big, but they’re not a thought experiment. They’re a force.

Similar to Sun Ra’s take on Afrofuturism, the band resist being pigeonholed into any one idea, sound or cultural perspective. Instead, they burst their references apart, creating something entirely new. No matter what direction they go in, it can only come from Yamantaka // Sonic Titan.

2018 DIRT Paper Bag Records, Toronto

Upcoming release - March 23 2018

2016 Brandon Lim joined

2016 "SEVERED OST" Drinkbox Studios, Toronto

Winner of 2016 Canadian Video Game Award for Best Musical Score

Collaboration with Pantayo

2015 Joanna Delos Reyes & Hiroki Tanaka join

2015 Ruby Kato Attwood & John Ancheta depart

2014 Tour North America with Perfect Pussy

2013 "UZU" Paper Bag Records(CA), Suicide Squeeze Records(US), All Tomorrow's Parties (UK/EU)

LP, CD, Digital

Shortlisted for 2014 Polaris Music Prize

Juno nominee for 2014 Alternative Album

2013 Alana Ruth departs

2013 "33" POP Montreal at Rialto Theatre, Montreal

Experimental Noh Wave opera with original live score

Starring Ange Loft, Daniel Ellis, Chase Lo, Jonas Gilbert, and Alana Ruth

2012-13 Tour North America

opened for artists such as Thurston Moore, Lydia Lunch, Quintron and Ms. Pussycat, Xiu Xiu

2012 "Mark and Blade" Klei Entertainment, Toronto

Composed for Klei Entertainment’s Mark of the Ninja (PC)

2012 "LAMIA" Adult Swim, New York, NY

Digital Single for Adult Swim Singles Series

2012 "JOHN I’M ONLY DANCING" Paper Bag Records

Part of the compilation "PAPER BAG RECORDS VS. THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS"

2012 "33" Rhubarb Festival, Buddies at Bad Times Theatre Toronto

Experimental Noh Wave opera with original live score

Starring Ange Loft, Daniel Ellis, Chase Lo

2012 Aylwin Lo joins

2011 "YT//ST", Psychic Handshake (1st press), Montreal

LP, CD, Digital

Shortlisted for 2012 Polaris Music Prize

Hoshi Neko shortlisted for 2013 Prism Prize

2nd press, CAN: Paper Bag Records, USA: Suicide Squeeze

2011 Walter Scott and Shub Roy depart, John Ancheta joins

2010 Ange Loft & Brendan Swanson join

2009 Adrienne Mak departs, Ruby Kato Attwood rejoins

2009 Ruby Kato Attwood departs, Adrienne Mak & Walter Scott join

2008 Shub Roy joins

2008 "KONAMI KOMANDO", Articule, Montreal

Window Installation

2007 Founded by alaska B, Ruby Kato Attwood & Alana Ruth