1 Juni 2026 |
Moving between Tokyo and North West London, Yottie’s debut mixtape CASINO maps contemporary urban life through fractured electronics, improvisation, and emotionally precise songwriting. As a key member of the PARADE collective, an interdisciplinary network of artists working across sound, image, fashion, and text, the London-based artist develops a sound that balances distortion, rhythm, and granular detail with deeply personal narratives.
Across CASINO, geography becomes emotional infrastructure rather than backdrop, shaping a record that moves between hypnotic vocal passages, corrosive atmospheres, and stripped-back moments of reflection. The computer functions as both instrument and compositional framework, with loops, glitches, and voice fragments forming the foundation of its structure.
Throughout our conversation, Yottie reflects on improvisation, inherited sound worlds, emotional pacing, and the relationship between ambiguity and structure. Rooted in fragmentation but guided by instinct, CASINO emerges as a project that feels both intimate and unstable, balancing collapse and precision in equal measure
Hi Yottie, CASINO moves between Tokyo and North West London. How did those shifts in geography affect your sense of time, rhythm and emotional pacing across the project?
Both cities share a sense of dynamics that is emphasised with the proximity to the centre, which I’ve had the opportunity to explore in both Tokyo and London alike. The afterglow of being in the midst of it all still drove my expression even after stepping away from it. The cities allowed an intensity to be explored in the music whilst also giving attention to the lull of the outskirts.
You often treat the computer as an instrument rather than a production tool. What does it allow you to do that traditional instrumentation does not, especially in terms of feel and timing?
I had a few years studying Computing, and I feel that one of the main takeaways was to be decisive in your creativity. Adopting binary logic within creative decision making is as much a tool as the software used to interpret and record instrumentation, but I think the relationship between the two makes it more enjoyable.
Your music constantly sits between control and collapse, structure and improvisation. At what point does instability stop being a method and become the point itself?
I think when a narrative has already been well defined. I find the work I have done adjacent to CASINO, which leaned into the collapse of structure, worked best with film or visual grounding. That ambiguity of structure feels like it helps the audience fill in the gaps, which I think is always an aim for me.
Despite that, using instability as a means to explore, like being over productive when you’re half asleep, helps me chart new ground that may not have initially been present in day-to-day waking logic.
“76” draws on Greek rebetiko traditions and migration histories. How do you approach translating inherited sound worlds into something that feels personal rather than referential?
An attitude within rebetiko music has always been resistance, questioning what is imposed on communities and the people within them. Despite paying homage to scales and impromptu recording methods used to make that music, interpersonal expression as an act of defiance feels like a healthy choice to pursue, both as a cultural element and as a headlight for navigating life in a city.
PARADE is often discussed as much as a visual and conceptual world as a musical one. How does being part of that shared language affect what you feel responsible for in your own work?
Shared language always affects the way people communicate and come to conclusions, but I guess that leads to a responsibility to figure out your own dictionary, the slang or shorthand that you like, and hopefully others resonate with that too.
Having that community builds confidence in the way you express yourself, understanding what is similar or dissimilar to that around you. In addition, PARADE consists of artists with many practices, visual, fashion, writing, so that has helped shape an understanding of place within the cultural landscape.
Even when the material is abstract, there is a strong sense of physicality in your sound. Do you think that comes from how you perform, how you record, or how you imagine sound in the room?
I think all three play a part. The performance and the way it resonates in a room surely guide what comes next. I think how it feels for yourself and others has to be a compass, to acknowledge it, but not let it completely steer. I’m not going to keep adding salt if the food is too salty.
“little little” splits into narration, fragmentation and rhythmic manipulation alongside animation. Do you think of storytelling as something linear in your work, or something constantly broken apart and reassembled?
Personal narratives are usually a backbone to my work, yet working on the animation with Ben Smalley for “little little”, whose visual language is incredibly self-definitive, was a beautiful opportunity to feel out how narratives can overlap when given free rein to respond.
The animation was an assemblage of hand-animated work, collating 60s erotica and horror amongst other images which Ben pieced together. The outcome felt tactile and alive, which was a pleasure to experience.
Your process leans heavily on improvisation, yet the final recordings feel meticulously constructed. Where do you usually find yourself making the first decisive edit?
The final decision can either come after the second mix or after a complete sabotage through endless attempts. I want to play with both because telling myself more time spent will always bear better outcomes feels counterintuitive to trusting your artistry.
Mark Hollis’ process has been a recurring conversation around me recently, which I find interesting, and I feel the same sentiment is being explored in new music that I hear coming out now. But Occam’s Razor has its good use for a reason too.
“miracle” was built from voice notes and a minimal piano setup in Harajuku. How do constraints change your relationship to authorship and control in the studio?
Working within constraints, despite the added pressure, usually creates exciting outcomes. I enjoy that both when working alone and with others. Acoustically, the voice notes bring character and ambience of the moment, a natural degradation of the sonics, but also, honestly, necessity is the driving force.
A lot of writing around your work places it in a wider movement of emotionally driven experimental electronics that sit between club logic and compositional sound design. Does that framing resonate with you, or does it miss something fundamental about what you’re trying to do?
The practice of making is an exploration for myself as much as it is for the audience when it is received. How it lands and resonates with people is as informative as the process itself. At the end of it, it has to be fun.
