100% YES Melt Yourself Down

• 1 Boot And Spleen 03:45
• 2 This Is The Squeeze 03:53
• 3 Born In The Manor 03:55
• 4 Every Single Day 03:42
• 5 It Is What It Is 03:04
• 6 From The Mouth 04:34
• 7 Crocodile 03:38
• 8 Don't Think Twice 03:17
• 9 Chop Chop 03:09
• 10 100% Yes 06:58
• Total Runtime 39:55

Info for 100% YES

London 6-piece Melt Yourself Down are set to release their third studio album 100% YES. The band also announce a UK headline tour, including a date at London’s Lafayette on 22nd April. Melt Yourself Down have also written original music for the opening and end credits of new BBC sitcom ‘King Gary’, which premieres on BBC One tonight.

Formed in 2012 by Mercury nominated sax innovator Pete Wareham and fronted by vocalist Kush Gaya, Melt Yourself Down rose from the ashes of Pete’s previous outfit Acoustic Ladyland and from everything he learned with Polar Bear. His work in reinventing and defying musical genres has paved the way for acts such as Comet is Coming, Black Flower and Sons of Kemet, to name a handful.

With their current single ‘Every Single Day’ being added to BBC 6 Music’s playlist for a second consecutive week, this new music is the band’s most vital yet. Working with production legends Youth and Ben Hillier, the band have reimagined themselves and created a bruising re-up of their signature sound with added synths, anthems and epic joyrides for their upcoming new album, 100% YES.

The hard hitting track "Every Single Day" explores the toxicity of social media platforms; “I’m a series of clicks and likes”, says Kush. The weaponisation of data is currently at the forefront of much debate and concern and Melt Yourself Down’s direct approach is blunt yet incredibly absorbing and inspiring.

The album’s searing opener ‘Boot and Spleen’ is inspired by the dark history of British colonialism in India. “The conversation that we're having in this song is: What is it to be British?” says Kush. “What's that identity now, in 2019? What sort of behaviours are allowed towards minorities, or from minorities towards the majority?”

There’s no simple answer to those questions but Melt Yourself Down are asking them anyway. They play into a great tradition of British insurgents that spans decades and genres, from the Sex Pistols to Radiohead, from Kate Tempest to Young Fathers. Yet the band’s lineage is also connected to jazz’s rich history of sticking a middle finger to The Man. “Jazz was the wild, dirty music of the 20s, 30s,” says Kush. “It was not a sit down, polite, experience.” Pete adds: “my favourite kind of jazz is when it feels dangerous”

The album as a whole presents an unflinching focus on the pressing realities of life in Britain today. ‘Born in the Manor’ takes on the Grenfell tragedy amidst looming synths and staccato brass, as Kush’s vocals morph from menacing speak-raps to a desperate wail. Lyrics indict the powers that be whose negligence allowed the West London fire to happen: "Born in the manor / Born in the gutter / For dem it don’t matter / Blacker, whiter, browner / You burn in a tower.”

The track ‘Crocodile’ is about the terrifying Russian drug Krokodil which literally melts people’s flesh. Kush says. “It’s about youth decay. It was very reminiscent of my time in Bristol where quite a few of my friends got addicted to crack, some died, some are still hooked. It is about boredom and desperation, unhealthy party scenes, having too much time on their hands and doing crap jobs.”

The record closes with the album’s title song 100% YES. Brimming with optimism as the title suggests, the track highlights the band’s unparalleled skill and craftsmanship as musicians.

The desire to create new sonic pathways is an integral philosophy to Melt Yourself Down, whose two critically-lauded albums to date have alchemised influences from noisy No Wave to Nubian rhythms to create an eclectic and pan-global kind of party-punk. But their epochal third album 100% YES is their strongest statement yet, representing both a peak of musical synthesis for the band as well as a personal triumph.

This is a record set to establish Melt Yourself Down at the forefront of today’s music innovators, and a timely document of the increasingly complex nature of Britishness, whilst at the same time bubbles with excitement and hopefulness.

“So much has changed in the world since we started writing in 2016” says Pete. “We couldn’t ignore any of it and this new music is borne from our feelings of extreme cultural restlessness”.

Melt Yourself Down

Melt Yourself Down
In an unassuming leafy South London street, Pete Wareham’s sonic sanctuary is enabling London six-piece Melt Yourself Down to create their most vital music yet. The sax innovator’s home studio merges both futurist thinking and time-honoured tradition. Here, state-of-the-art recording equipment sits beneath wall hangings with Tibetan designs — and, essentially, his two treasured saxophones. He produces these with a flourish: huge, hulking things with oxidised patches that look as if they’ve been exhumed from the long-forgotten closet of a roaring 20s jazz club (in fact, they’re only a few years old). “You can have shiny ones that you put lacquer on,” Pete explains, holding a weathered-looking baritone sax. “Or you can have no lacquer, which I think gives you more character, and you have to forge your own sound.”

The desire to create new sonic pathways is an integral philosophy to Melt Yourself Down, whose two critically-lauded albums to date have alchemised influences from noisy No Wave to Nubian rhythms to create an eclectic and pan-global kind of party-punk. But their epochal third album 100% YES (released on the band’s new label Decca) is their strongest statement yet, representing both a peak of musical synthesis for the band as well as a personal triumph.

“After the second album, Melt Yourself Down was at a crossroads,” says vocalist Kush Gaya. “We left our label, we had no certainties, no life vests and very limited resources, it was a live or die situation. We had to change course, and modify our direction to reflect life beyond just the musical concepts and ideas that we had before. The answers soon came as we started looking within ourselves rather than looking out. By starting a process of finding out who we were as people, and how we related to the world around us, we found the music!” Pete agrees: “We had to deepen our process, which we did,” he says. “We really started working on this towards the end of 2016, so loads of shit was happening — Brexit, Trump.”

The result is songwriting with an unflinching focus on the pressing realities of life in Britain today. “Born in the Manor” takes on the Grenfell tragedy amidst looming synths and staccato brass, as Kush’s vocals morph from menacing speak-raps to a desperate wail. Lyrics indict the powers that be whose negligence allowed the West London fire to happen: "Born in the manor / Born in the gutter / For dem it don’t matter / Blacker, whiter, browner / You burn in a tower.” Kush explains: “It’s harrowing. Those lyrics are a shout against the authorities for not really caring whether you're black white or brown.”

The Western world’s political swing towards the right also promoted Kush to further consider his identity as an African-raised, London-based artist of South Asian descent. “That made me definitely look within me,” he says. He was thinking “In the western world, which is predominantly a white world, what's my space in it? How do you place yourself within the world here, politically, socially, but also, musically?"

Those reflections powerfully come through on the album’s searing opening track “Boot and Spleen,” which is partly inspired by the dark history of British colonialism in India. “A conversation that we're having in that song is, ‘What is it to be British?,’” says Kush. “What's that identity now, in 2019? What sort of behaviours are allowed towards minorities, or from minorities towards the majority?”

There’s no simple answer to those questions, but Melt Yourself Down are set to ignite debate by asking them. In this, they play into a great tradition of British insurgents that spans decades and genres, from the Sex Pistols to Radiohead, and from Kate Tempest to Young Fathers. Yet the band’s lineage is also connected to jazz’s rich history of sticking a middle finger to The Man. “Jazz was the wild, dirty music of the 20s, 30s,” says vocalist Kush. “It was not a sit down, polite, experience.” Pete continues: “Jazz doesn’t feel as dangerous as it used to be”

That rawness has begun to be brought back to jazz in recent years — with American artists such as Kamasi Washington and Thundercat, as well as musicians who are closer to home. Last year, for instance, The Observer noted the “British jazz explosion” in a feature that highlighted artists including Shabaka Hutchings, a third of Mercury-nominated band Sons of Kemet and formerly part of Melt Yourself Down. Yet jazz has an under-acknowledged role in the history of guitar music too. “The saxophone was in post-punk and rock’n’roll” says Pete. “It was a dominant sound for a while.”

Prepare for it to become inescapable all over again. Pete, a former member of Polar Bear and founder of Acoustic Ladyland, proves the sax’s true versatility on 100% YES, from a frantic whirligig on “Chop Chop” to a cosmic, tripped-out feel on “This Is The Squeeze.” “You can use the saxophone as a guitar or synth,” he explains. “It can have that same impact as a really massive, full on guitar. [On 100% YES] I think I’ve recorded my best playing so far”

100% YES is a record set to establish Melt Yourself Down at the forefront of today’s music innovators, and a timely document of the increasingly complex nature of Britishness — which nevertheless brims with the optimism that its title suggests. “This record mirrors/reflects??? how we felt and still feel,” says Kush decisively. “If people can recognise themselves in our sounds and words, that's brilliant. But we're definitely not torch bearers for this or that demographic. We're here to portray and reflect what's going on within us and around us.” With their increasingly attuned sense to the world around them and each other, more people than ever will undoubtedly be saying 100% YES to Melt Yourself Down very soon.

100% YES is out now!

This album contains no booklet.