With their new record Ten Seated Figures, Yes We Mystic has succeeded in exceeding their previous excess; creating something bigger than anything they’ve done before. Voices and instruments meld into a swath of sound so dense and so complex that something new bursts forth, its origin impossible to place.
On 2016’s Forgiver (lauded by Exclaim! for its “fearless creative energy”) the band tried to fit in as many inorganic sounds as possible yet make them feel as though they lived in an organically created musical world. Ten Seated Figures instead embraces the unfamiliar. The sonic landscape is brimming with sounds that are unidentifiable, but still created with the same instrumentation Yes We Mystic has always used. This ties into the theme of the record as a whole; the ways in which our misremembering, misunderstandings, and the little lies we all tell ourselves shape who we are and how we interact with the world.
“It’s about memory, it’s about false memory and different ways in which we can remember the same event, see the same event, distort the same event in our mind and how it can change who we are. That’s what the album is about lyrically, and how it was made sonically as well; we tried to cloud the origins of what you’re hearing in the instruments,” says vocalist and guitarist Adam Fuhr. In fact, by track 10 no member of Yes We Mystic plays a note on the recording. What started as an arrangement by collectif9 was built up by guest musicians. The only trace of the band are Fuhr’s vocals, but even those were made by dishonest means; he spoke the words once, and a computer program pitched them into place so he appears to be singing.
To help accomplish their vision, the band created a massive art project in tandem with the recording of the album; including recruiting five more band members to create up an alternate version of Yes We Mystic. They will do interviews, have their own photoshoots and they will perform; the other Yes We Mystic is, essentially, a dual face of the band. “In music, in art, what the creator asserts is true becomes true to some extent in the context of that art. Our question is, how far can this be pushed?” explains Fuhr.
The creation of Ten Seated Figures was different for the band in more ways than one; Yes We Mystic signed to DevilDuck Records in 2018, which has given them the resources to execute big plans they’ve had in the works for years. In addition, Ten Seated Figures also marks Fuhr’s debut as a producer. In the studio, Fuhr had to learn how to produce and engineer as the band was writing the record; many moments on the album were captured as they were conceived. And though Fuhr took the helm as producer, the band flew to Montreal to have the record mixed by beloved producer/engineer Marcus Paquin (Arcade Fire, The National.)
Ten Seated Figures is the culmination of a months-long creative burst; one that embraces the band’s designation as “art-pop transformers” (BeatRoute), but also turns things on their head; one that holds surprises for listeners and will make them question much of what they see and hear. “We strongly believe in music as art. The rules of our art are that it must be crafted with subversion in mind, it must be beautiful, it must be tragic, it must be intellectual, but it must speak to something that is fundamentally easy to understand” says Fuhr. “It is music to disrupt, to jar you, to surprise you, to make you feel something strongly. We hope that this album will cause people to reexamine the narratives they use to present themselves to the world. But we also hope this album will cause people to lie awake at night with a melody in their head.”
Glide is thrilled to premiere “Please Bring Me To Safety” a twisted and colorful journey of sound and intrigue that combines explosive enthusiasm alongside an “indie” perspective. Taking shades of early Arcade Fire and bullets of Glass Animals, Yes We Mystic are engraving a new stamp on art rock.
“Our new record was made by taking conventional, organic sounds and morphing them into something unrecognizable,” says Fuhr. In “Please Bring Me to Safety”, the main sound is made up of an electric piano run through an amp, but we wired it up to send the first piano’s reverb through a second amp, while pitch shifting it up by a hard fourth. The reverb is in a different key than the rest of the song, and it creates a really unique effect. The song is about a disorienting evening and is reflected in the disorienting sounds.”
