Yves Tumor (Yves Tumor) history: career start, albums, interesting facts...

Sean Bowie, better known as Yves Tumor, is an American musician and producer who creates experimental electronic music. And it's not the kind of music that lights up the Thompson-Boling Arena, where fans of cowboy hats and locally brewed beer come in droves... No. Yves Tumor is a far cry from everything you're used to seeing in East Tennessee....

"I do get a lot of weird attention in my direction...," Yves Tumor once said while discussing the rock star image he plays. "Sometimes it's hard to draw the line here..."

The beginning of the journey

As an artist committed to mysticism - Bowie reveals little about his childhood and upbringing... He was born in Miami and grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. At the age of 16, Sean learnt to play guitar: at first he played well-known songs by bands like Nirvana and Green Day. The boy saw music as a way out of the "dull conservative environment".

After Bowie's parents confiscated his instrument due to poor performance in school, the young musician learnt the keys on the family piano, honed his sense of rhythm (which, incidentally, came from the influence of Motown Records and Jimi Hendrix), and began making amateur recordings in the basement. A little later, Sean would describe his experience growing up in Tennessee as "unpleasant." Perhaps hence why there is so little information about this period....

At the age of 20, Sean moved to San Diego. After briefly attending college, Bowie moved to Los Angeles where he met the queer punk rapper Mykki Blanco. Together they went on tour....

Soon Bowie began releasing music under different names. Of all, the pseudonym Yves Tumor caught on. The early music, which brought together field recordings, edgy noise and streamlined funk, attracted a devoted audience... Yves Tumor's live performances soon became legendary!

"I could easily find the biggest guy in the crowd and use him as a prop," Bowie said. "Jumping on him, hanging my legs off his neck..."

Career: Where did it all start?

In early 2010, Yves Tumor was using the name Teams. He created music that AllMusic described as "post-chillwave".

The artist made his debut with the Yves Tumor project only in 2015, with an EP for Berlin's experimental club label Janus. The same year saw the release of the full-length "When Man Fails You", which quickly caught the attention of a wide audience.

New contracts and new successes

In autumn 2016, Yves Tumor signed a record deal with PAN Records. This was followed by the album "Serpent Music". According to Yves himself, he worked on it for more than three years... The record was recorded in different places around the world: from Miami and Los Angeles to Leipzig and Berlin! One of Pitchfork's critics characterised "Serpent Music" as follows:

"The use of unsettling percussion loops and field recordings create a mood like getting lost in an unfamiliar cityscape..."

In 2017, Yves Tumor released a compilation album titled "Experiencing the Deposit of Faith". Soon after, a contract with Warp Records was signed, after which the artist went on tour with a new audiovisual show.

An album, Warp Safe in the Hands of Love, followed in autumn 2018. There was no pre-announcement. Except for the singles "Noid", "Licking an Orchid" and "Lifetime". The release was warmly received by critics... Shortly after the release, a note appeared in Pitchfork:

"This album is several orders of magnitude above the rest of Yves Tumor's work. The leap has been so audacious that it's disorientating!"

On the success of "Heaven to a Tortured Mind."

When working on albums, artists often deviate from a particular genre, trying something new. Sometimes pop becomes rock, and sometimes country becomes rap. But this is not the case with Yves Tumor, who has an innate ability to stay true to himself. The artist has always managed to successfully combine seemingly contradictory musical styles... However, just because the new album sounds more pop doesn't mean that Yves Tumor has changed.

Yves Tumor's fourth album with the mesmerising title "Heaven to a Tortured Mind" was released on 3 April 2020. Shortly before that, namely on 3 March of the same year, it was preceded by the single "Kerosene" featuring Diane Gordon.

A reviewing critic from The Guardian triumphantly dubbed the release "Album of the Week", describing it as "extraordinary and experimental, suitable for any genre, with an internal logic that influences mood shifts!"

"It's a buffet of sonnets and emotion," Bowie himself said.

And indeed: 'Heaven to a Tortured Mind' deserves a special mention, if only because the lyrics that preceded it were often about the end of times and love as the most frightening thing on the agenda....

"It's scary," Bowie said. "It's like riding a rollercoaster: you know there's going to be a huge sharp drop, as well as the fact that there's going to be a rise afterwards!"

One way or another, but everyone should listen to "Heaven to a Tortured Mind" at least once....

Interesting facts...

Yves Tumor believes that his gender or sexuality should not define his art:

"I really like to make innuendos in how I express myself, rather than making my gender, my sexuality or my feelings about equality - my personal brand..."

"To see Yves Tumor take the stage is to be battered by the howling villain of cyberpunk, yet filter the recorded output and experience a kaleidoscopic union of classic songwriting and robotic sonic experimentation," is exactly what the description that accompanies ticket links to a Yves Tumor show reads!

Bowie once said:

"There's something about Throbbing Gristle's music that... Like - the hypnotic trance vibe. And they really affected me..."

Once, during a performance in Texas, a fan jumped on Yves and... bit him on the neck! The artist later shared his experiences:

"He bit my neck!" - the musician said. "I was signing his album after the show and I was like, 'Why did you bite me?' There's a pandemic going on..." And he said he just wanted to know what my taste was!"

Although Yves Tumor's production methods and sonic aesthetics have undergone several changes, Bowie has remained committed to visual shock! For example, in the music video for the song "Gospel for a New Century", the horns and furry feet make the artist appear as Pan, the Greek god of wildlife and pagan symbol of male power....

"Eve Tumor is the rock star of our generation," said Jordan Hemingway, the photographer and director who worked on the album artwork.

Conclusion

Yves Tumor is more than just an artiste. It's an ambitious, deeply emotional statement in an all too often bland musical world... Album images are shocking, and concerts can be dark and uplifting... The project's music videos are filled with libidinous and ambiguous metaphors in equal measure. And Bowie knows that the term "rock star" has now become anachronistic, even trashy:

"It's nice to act like one, to look like one," he said. "That's what personality is... Only a self-sufficient personality can ignite a crowd, even if it's going to be a creepy sight..."