Eighty One (Electronic) – Yppah

Album: Eighty One

Artist: Yppah

Released: 2012

Description: Joe Corrales Jr., aka Yppah, is an electronic and rock musician based now in Long Beach, California. His music is inspired by hip-hop and shoegaze, creating  tracks that combine tasty beats with almost hypnotic melodies where he mixes electronics and analog instruments. His website provides a great explanation of the album:

“His third album reflects a change in the landscape around him. Midway through the process of recording the demos for what became Eighty One, Corrales started making regular trips to Galveston, on the Texas Gulf coast, to surf. So energized was he by his experiences, he left his home in Texas and moved to Long Beach, California. Unsurprisingly then, he says that the images he had in his head as he made his new music were of the sea and the beach. “I wanted a lot of the songs to feel like a warm wash,” he explains. The record takes its title from the year Corrales was born and, perhaps the very act of moving away from childhood locales stirred up “memories from random times in my life. Like I was trying to recreate certain feelings I had at different points in my life with melodies, if that makes any sense.” And he goes on to ask, “You know how when you’re a child you feel your life has a certain melodic theme that you can’t really put your finger on and you can almost hear it, but it’s not anything you’ve ever heard before?” Eighty One is his attempt to capture those melodies.”

If you write to electronic or instrumental hip-hop, do yourself a favor and check out Eighty One.

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