Duo that makes firm electro-rock with heavy influences from the eighties, in
which this cold sound is made warm by the voice of singer Lennerd Busé,
or as the record company puts it "an original and touching mix of elements
from the past decades".
Songs
"Happy"
43 sec. - 85 Kb.
song : Busé, D'haene
Productie : Yum, Gary Langan
Jaar : 2000
Record co. : Sony
"Caught it alive"
55 sec. - 109 Kb.
song : Busé, D'haene
Productie : Yum, Gary Langan
Jaar : 2001
Record co. : Sony
"Fake"
43 sec. - 85 Kb.
song : Busé, D'haene
Productie : Yum, Gary Langan.
Jaar : 2001
Record co. : Sony
The band Yum came into being during the course of 1998, when Reinert d'Haene
(drummer for the formation Ashbury Faith) helped
out on the production of a band called The Bliss. This is where he ran into the
Canadian/Dutch singer Lennerd Busé, and because there was an immediate
musical and friendly bond between the two, Yum was born.
Somewhat later, the two started recording stuff on their own, and put it on
a Minidisc that was sent to some record companies. For this, the duo dressed up
the songs that were originally written on acoustic guitar with electronics of
Reinert's brother Geert. This low-budget solution to get a fuller sound for the
duo, later on became somewhat of their trademark. The demo was also handed out
to A&R people of Sony Belgium, who later on turned out to be enthusiastic
enough about it to sign the band.
In the meantime however, D'Haene & Busé hadn't been lying around,
as they had been recording their songs in the studio of brother broer Geert (with
the goal to make a cd they would issue themselves). With the Sony-interest in
the band, things got a little more ambitious, and Gary Langan (one of the
founders of Art of Noise, and producer of countless bands such as ABC, Frankie
Goes to Hollywood, Scritti Politti, The The ...) was sent in by the record company.
Langan didn't get full control over the production, but he did steer the sound
of the band in a slightly different direction in the Ace-Studio in Aartselaar.
"There was a proposition to re-record the entire album from the ground
up, but we chose to work with the original recordings to keep the original feeling",
Reinert told MIXnMusic.
The result was a sort of pop-rock-dance-eighties-wave hybrid on the first full-cd.
Reinert about this to de Standaard : "I have often thought that the band
risked "falling in between two chairs": too poppy for the alternative
audience, and too loud for the mainstream. How do you sell that. Where to place
that in the musical environment? But since elektronics are so widely used these
days, the audience has widened their mind." And in De Morgen : "We
were planning on self-releasing the album, as we were quite convinced no record
company would have us. But then it turned out the market is now open for such
things: see Das Pop, Zita Swoon
or Ozark Henry. Three fantastic bands that use elektronics
in their own way within their music!".
In 2000 the first officials signs of life for the band were sent out, as the song
"Happy" was taken aboard the soccer movie "Team Spirit"
(also on Sony). A bit later, this track was also released as a (promo)-single,
shortly afterwards followed by "Caught it Alive". In april 2001
the full cd bearing the title CD Monokid (which apparently means "single
child that is raised by a single parent") was ready and got officially
presented in the AB-club, a live show that received the well-known "mixed
feelings" from the press. De Morgen for example wrote "the emphatic
synthesizer-layer under most songs got quite tiresome after a while, but the crystal
clear vocals and inventive drumming made up for that. The everpresent eighties-references
(such as Yazoo and Nik Kershaw in "Green Lightbulbs", or A-ha in "Happy")
risk to brand YUM as more of a gimmick than a band." However, a few months
later the excellent single "Fake" got issued, the breakthough
became a fact (mainly thru a top 10 in de Afrekening) and Yum came to be one of
the Belgian revelations of that spring.
Striking though that the typically synth-swollen tracks as "Happy"
and "Caught it Alive" didn't really catch the public & radio-ear,
and that the breaktrough came instead with the much more conventional/emotional
"Fake". "The successor could be situated in all kind of directions",
acknowledged Reinert in MixNMusic : "Lennerds voice is so strong that
this gives us so much more freedom on the musical side of things. His voice ties
it all up".
In the summer of 2001, the band was candidate for a place as the "People's
Choice" at the Beach Festival in Zeebrugge.
Members :
- Lennard Busé (vocals)
- Reinert d'Haene (drums)
live also:
- Geert d'Haene (keyboards)
- Matthias van der Hallen (guitar)
Websites :
- Yum-music.com is the official site
- Yum on the soundtrack of the movie Team Spirit
- Zap.to/yum, an early fansite
- Yum-special atMSN (aussi en
français)
- Pictures of Yum during the recording of Monokid at ACE-studio's
- Interview with Reinert & Lennard in streaming video at Canal
Plus
Watch it : This site pays royalties, and was built and maintained in
accordance with the terms and conditions negotiated with SABAM,
the Belgian society of copyright-holders. Consultation of this site is free, but
this exludes downloading, reproducing or public performance of any part of this
site. Please do not copy. Link!