Over the last decade Pennsiola Florida band YNICORNS have been making some of the most atmospheric and compelling music you’ll hear anywhere. The band are set to release their new album “Break Break Break” on July 5th. I sat down with founding member Doug Stanford to talk about their early musical experiences, how YNICORNS got started and the making of “Break Break Break” which you can preview and pre-order here.
CMM-What was the first music that really made an impact on you all growing up and what artists and bands did you all enjoy the most?
Doug-I didn’t actually get too into contemporary music until late middle/early high school… it was the late 90s so I was listening to grunge but a friend at some point early in high school gave me a mix cd of trance music of the era, BT’s song Flaming June was on it and it completely changed my view of music. Long, instrumental songs that focused on texture and mood, conveying a lot to the listener without saying a word. I spent the rest of high school in love with electronic music, making a lot of it myself as well. I picked up the guitar to start a Japanese rock cover band that was short lived, but eventually through a series of friends in college I was introduced to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, and Sigur Ros… it immediately clicked, so much of what I Ioved about instrumental electronic and the energy of rock music, it became a form I could understand how to express myself through.
Simultaneously I fell in love with American Football’s debut LP and listened to a ton of the indie of the era, At the Drive In, Modest Mouse, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Don Caballero, and others. The last big influence was when I heard Music for 18 Musicians, which opened up the door to minimalism and started to tie a lot together for me.
CMM-When did you all first start playing instruments and making your own music and how did everyone meet and form YNICORNS?
I played piano and trumpet as a kid, but I bought a guitar around my 18th birthday. YNICORNS didn’t start until a lot later though, in 2013 I was given a loop pedal and the ASAT guitar I still play today, YNICORNS began as a solo project after a long period of not writing or performing… it stayed that way until 2022 when I was invited to play on a bigger stage than I’d had the opportunity to before with our friends, Noiseheads, so I called up the guys I thought might be willing to join me for it, somehow they’re still on board.
CMM-You all are about to release an amazing album called “Break Break Break”. What was the writing and recording process like? Any notable pieces of gear that you all used throughout the sessions?
Doug-Thank you for the kind words! The writing for this technically started as far back as 2018, Untitled 3 and 1 both began as ambient compositions that I shelved once I started on 2021’s “We Miss You Stay Safe”. I burnt myself out on ambient doing that record and spending a lot of time alone improving in my room for the bulk of the pandemic, so I started to challenge myself to go back to composed music, something I hadn’t tried to do much of in a number of years. Picking up those songs and evolving them into what they are now started to make some things click for me, I started to develop the qualities of what makes a YNICORNS song a YNICORNS song… unconventional phrasing, alternative tuning, not going with my first impulse for evolving a song.
There’s this great interview with Jon Hopkins on Song Exploder where he talks about the process of writing Luminous Beings that’s really resonated with me since I first heard it a few years back. He started with this loop that he thought was the most beautiful, perfect thing he’d ever written and he listened to it for weeks until he hated it because it was too perfect, too saccharine, so he ran it through as many things as he could to mangle it and it became this twisted strangeness you hear at the beginning of the song… he realized that pretty things have to be counterbalanced with some strangeness or it doesn’t work. I look at a lot of this record through that lens. I composed this album solo, mostly inside pro tools, not thinking I’d ever perform it live so eventually when the band came together and we had a show booked I had to go through and actually learn the songs myself while transcribing them for my bandmates, it was exhausting haha.
Once it was clear the band was a thing, the last songs I wrote for the album (Kyiv and Seiche) were written with a 4 piece arrangement in mind. In terms of gear, the album was recorded with a ton of virtual things – brainwerx amp modelers, native instruments drums and piano, spitfire audio orchestras… the guitars are all the same G&L ASAT I love and my pedalboard, which does take advantage of this strange Boss Fender Reverb modeling pedal, the thing sounds so janky and metallic the way I have it dialed in and arranged in the signal chain, it works great for the feedback/drone sections like the last half of Riven and the intro to Kyiv. Of course there’s also the screwdriver parts, anything that sounds like violins or cellos on the album are done by using a screwdriver like a hybrid bow/slide on the strings.
CMM- If the band could collaborate on an album with another band or musician who would it be and what direction do you think the music would go in?
Doug-I mean the dream would probably be collaborating with Steve Reich or John Adams, maybe Steve Holms or Joe Reinhart… actually the last handful of songs were also deeply influenced by Louis Cole and Nate Smith so I would love to hear what they could do with the rhythm sections of the songs. Realistically speaking, the Pensacola music scene is absolutely incredible and there’s no shortage of bands I would kill to collaborate with. YNICORNS shares members with Faux/Fox, we’ve got great friend-bands like Palmmeadow, GLSNR, and Surrounder… there’s just a ton of amazing creative energy between establishment and fresh faces in this town and we couldn’t be luckier to be surrounded by so much talent, I’d love to work with all of them. As for where it would go? I’d like to think things would just get weirder. Put together a bigger collage of genres into songs that make people feel something new, give them a new perspective on something they’re trying to work through.
CMM-What do you all have coming up next? Any new recordings/shows etc etc???
Doug-Expanding the writing method to include the full band. Each member has such a diverse set of influences I think we can channel it into an amazing evolution of what this record is so that we can all have more ownership over the songs we play. We’re currently looking at some dates later this summer and fall for shows but I think focusing on finding a rhythm and method for composing as a group is our next step.
