Yes, Indeed

Yes Indeed are Laurie Tompkins & Otto Willberg. Live, they play keys, bouncy bass and sing over tactile, emotive samples. The music is fuggy and soaring, deliciously out of place. 

On 2021’s ‘Exorcise’ EP, they let ratty violin, syrupy bass and foolish voices congeal over a backbone of co(s)mic spinnet and pit percussion. Boomkat rightly dubbed it “proper mad scones”. ‘Rotten Luck’ - a sodden, diaristic epic and YI’s first album proper – is out in September 2022. 

Laurie is a composer, helps run the Slip label and has put out CDs on Entr’acte, 33-33 and Hyperdelia this year. Otto is a bassist, plays in groups with Ashley Paul & Charles Hayward and his great band Historically Fucked has an LP coming on Upset The Rhythm. 

https://vimeo.com/559636244

Featured releases

Yes, indeed! The emphatic duo of Laurie Tompkins and Otto Willberg return for their third release, ‘Rotten Luck’ - a record we fell in love with watching the two of them gleefully headbanging in time, shrouded in the much beloved fog of Spanners club.Their first LP ‘Exorcise’, clobbered those that dared drop the needle with a brand of shrieking dadaism that lay impermeable but to the insane. It freaked us out, that cacophony soup. On ‘Rotten Luck’ - their funkiest number yet - there are tunes instead, good ones, meaty ones, soaked in bass riffs and lairy lyrics. There are hooks to grip on to and little silly grins to catch in the gloaming synth holds.Around the time of Yes Indeed's last release I was listening to a lot of Blue Gene Tyranny, working in the shop and selling loads of copies of the boxset that sadly marked his death. Listening to Willberg's squelching synth slap on ‘Our Dads’, I’m reminded of Blue Gene’s ‘Any Fine Afternoon' - a goofy kind of song whose bass line caused me to listen to the whole Theme Hospital soundtrack in earnest appreciation. ‘Awe’ on ‘Rotten Luck’ has a kind of Dreamtime energy to it, it’s jazzy double bass laced with wavy keys. It would seem I wasn’t the only one listening to the boxset.Primarily a composer, Laurie Tompkins is one third of the energy behind pop mulchers Slip. In the year between Yes Indeed releases, Tompkins has done 3 more CDs (33–33, Entrac’te and Hyperdelia), in a marvellous flurry of productiveness. Otto Willberg is bass player in Ray (alongside Ashley Paul and Yoni Silver) and Historically Fucked - a band who make songs as quick as they can and tear them down even faster. The mutual ground between the two is rich then, in pop, rock and the nonsensical. On ‘Rotten Luck’ it seems at its most fertile. Weirdness isn’t a mask - it’s not self conscious. It’s headbanging without realising it, slaying your arranged oddities with your mate, grinning the whole time and giving that out generously.  Extra samples on 5 by Gwilly EdmondezSax and melodica on 8 and 10 by Sam AndreaeMusic by Laurie Tompkins & Otto WillbergMastered by Mark KlonArtwork by FridgeLayout by Carey Alborough

Yes Indeed – Rotten Luck

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