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B2 Birthday Party: Yoav (UK)
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October 10, 22:00
B2 Club 
The road towards this striking album "Charmed and Strange" (2008) began in Cape Town in the late 1980s, when a nine-year-old boy began sneaking to his neighbour's house to listen to Wham! and OMD. At Yoav's house, such "light music" was banned. Only classical and opera would waft through their home. By the time he was 12, Yoav was waiting until his parents had gone to bed before quietly practising on the battered guitar his elder brother had given him. "I'd had to play instruments that I hated since I was four, things like the piano and the cello," he says. "I guess the guitar was my way of rebelling." When he was 15, he went to see a Crowded House show. "They did a thing where they asked if anyone in the crowd wanted to come up and sing," he says....Next thing I know I was on stage in front of 15,000 people. I started singing 'Into Temptation' and the place just went nuts. I did the whole song and then got this massive ovation." Suitably encouraged, Yoav began to focus on his own songwriting. By the time he finished high school at 18, he was regularly demoing his songs in local studios.
After a year at university, Yoav dropped out to head to London, armed with little more than demo tapes and big dreams. His cousin in New York had found herself sitting next to a record executive at a fundraising dinner, with Yoav's demo in her bag. The exec listened to it on his way home. Struck by Yoav's powerful singing voice, he called to offer him a development deal.
Within a few weeks, Yoav had relocated to New York. Compared to Cape Town, the city was a thrilling sensory playground. At this point, Yoav's music was what he describes as "pretty conventional singer-songwriter stuff". Yoav had stumbled upon his new direction.
“As a songwriter, the guitar limits you to strumming or picking. It's very different if you can write something to a beat. I tried to translate dance music to guitar. I started pounding it, learning what I could do with it, using it as my decks. You can get an assortment of kick drums and snare drums by hitting it in different places or a synthy sound by playing with feedback. The more I did it, the more possibilities I found. It became all-consuming for me."
In 2006 a deal was signed and Yoav made “Charmed & Strange” in Oxford and Montreal. Every note of it is played, teased, tapped and pounded out of his guitar. The album opens with the hypnotic “Adore Adore”, followed by “Club Thing”, a seductive tale of clubland excess in which Yoav proves he only needs his trusty acoustic to compete with Timbaland's beat-making. From there, one darkly uplifting song trips into another. “One By One” is a sighing eulogy to friends lost too early to responsibility; the yearning first single “Beautiful Lie” muses on disintegrating relationships and hidden truths; the groove-laden Yeah, “The End” paints a vivid picture of impending apocalypse; and the album is rounded off by a gorgeous, slowed down cover of the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” that could tear a heart at a hundred paces.
It's a record that sounds unlike anything else around, edgy and original, but with the tunes to light up daytime radio. "I've been told it sounds like Damien Rice produced by the Neptunes, or an acoustic Nine Inch Nails, or Beck meets Buckley meets Bjork. I'm not sure any of those is right. I guess I'd just say it's left-of-centre pop music inspired by all the big themes in my life and all the music I've been into. It's been a huge and often frustrating journey to get me here." Yoav allows himself a smile. "But it's definitely been worth it."
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