News
Montreal and Japan-based musician Jonah Yano announces his fourth studio album. Spin (out January 29, 2027).
Spin gathers the gentle, naïve, simplicities of Yano’s debut album, 2020’s souvenir, the sprawling arrangements of his BADBADNOTGOOD-produced sophomore effort, portrait of a dog, and the spirit of improvisation that animated 2024’s, Jonah Yano & the Heavy Loop, into a singular, concentrated document. Songwriting, as it always has been in Yano’s work, remains at the center as he espouses ease and self-assuredness.
To celebrate the album’s announcement, Yano releases a pair of songs from Spin. The title track offers a lush welcome to the project with thesis statement lyrics, “If life spins you around / Well then I’ll spin” punctuated by Yano’s warm vocals presented in layered harmony. While lead single “Holding On” offers wistful, groove-heavy piano, guitar and clarinet below Yano’s spare, delicate voice. Longtime collaborator and GRAMMY-award winning producer, Scott Zhang, aka Monsune co-produced the latter song with Yano.
Written and arranged across Montreal and Northern Japan’s main island of Hokkaidō, and recorded at Port William Sound in Mountain Grove, Ontario over five days, the 11 songs on Spin present Yano’s sonic identity at its simplest and strongest. He is backed by his long-time band, The Heavy Loop, with additional production contributions from Zhang (aka Monsune) and recorded with engineer Jonah Bonnetta. The shimmering water on the album cover is a picture of Hokkaidō’s Lake Shikotsu, where Yano would swim while writing the new songs. Previously, Yano has long made collaboration a cornerstone of his music – past collaborators include Mk.Gee, BADBADNOTGOOD, Clairo, Helena Deland, Ouri, Le Ren, Slauson Malone 1, Mustafa, and his father Tatsuya Muraoka among many others. On Spin, Yano is less interested in upending his musical language with collaborators than he is in distilling it on his own, reflecting the rewarding solitude of its writing process.
Yano was born in Hiroshima in 1994 and moved to Vancouver when he was four. He grew up listening to blues guitar and classic rock, learned piano under his grandmother’s tutelage, and later picked up guitar through a “School of Rock-esque” middle school program. In 2016, after moving to Toronto, he began recording demos on his cellphone and became immersed in the city’s underground music community. Many of the musicians he met there—including Monsune, Jacques Greene, Joseph L’Étranger, MONEYPHONE, and BADBADNOTGOOD—would become collaborators and friends, while helping him develop the technical vocabulary that would shape his early recordings. Yano’s work since his 2019 debut EP has earned praise from publications including Pitchfork, Billboard, The Fader, Metal, CLASH, Exclaim!, and Complex, while his music has been featured on NTS Radio, NPR’s Weekend Edition, and CBC Music’s The Intro. He has performed twice on COLORS and appeared at festivals including the Montreal International Jazz Festival and EFG London Jazz Festival, as well as touring extensively across Canada, Europe, and Japan. He has twice been a finalist for the SOCAN Songwriting Prize, for “delicate” in 2021 and “always” in 2023. His work has drawn support from figures including Gilles Peterson, Benji B, and the late Virgil Abloh.
In 2027, Yano will embark on his first American headline tour. More details to be announced soon.
Wahid shares “HEAT PRESS!” (Feat. Kim), following up the EP’s lead single “GENESIS!,” which he performed for On The Radar (up above). At the center of THEY ALL GO MAD! is the paradox that life is an act of faith, and true wisdom can be found by gambling on love or a creative pursuit. In eight tracks, Wahid presents windows-down anthems reverberating with atomic energy and pulverizing drums, dazzling aerial cadences and subtle moral clarity. Bangers, but suffused with a sense of a higher purpose. Anger deployed to righteous ends.
THEY ALL GO MAD! reflects an ongoing quest to find peace and stability in a world riven with malice and flux. It’s the partial extension of themes from his last release, feast, by ravens. In the fallout of the breakup of his vaunted nine-person collective, seeyousoon, creation led to personal catharsis. If feast was slightly experimental in its lyrical and production choices, THEY ALL GO MAD! revels in its confrontational sensibility. The first words on “Genesis” are “watch your step, kid.” A sly allusion to the opening salvo on Wu-Tang’s first hit, “Protect Ya Neck.” The intention is clear. No quarter will be offered. Wahid aims for the jugular, but he’s still got jokes. The beat from his long-time collaborator, Vitamn (who produced seven of the eight tracks) sounds somewhere between a celestial coronation and a lost outtake from Illadelph Halflife.
Raised in Central Florida, Wahid was steeped in rocksteady, dancehall and reggae dubplates by his father, a Jamaican-born DJ. As a teenager, Wahid’s older brother exposed him to the classics of hip-hop’s second Golden Age. As he describes it: “Nas made me want to rap, listening to the GZA’s Liquid Swords made me good at it, and Black Thought helped me refine my skills.”
Consider the Orlando rapper a radical traditionalist. In another life, he could’ve been the fifth member of TDE’s Black Hippy: a Swiss army knife capable of merging classic MC traditions with forward-thinking flows and melodies. With his double-time acrobatic patterns, he’s distinctly post-Kendrick Lamar and Lil Wayne – blessed with a novelist’s eye for minor detail and a virtuoso’s gift for ransacking hidden pockets of a beat. He can turn a warped post-Dilla instrumental to ashes with 16 bars and croon a plaintive falsetto wail on the hook that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Jeremih album. These vaunted gifts make THEY ALL GO MAD! the rare modern record that rewards careful listening.
For more information, check out VENTS Magazine.