Yppah, happy backwards, is Joe Corrales, a solo producer from Texas. A man who dapples across a number of instruments, sampling guitar, bass, drums and vocals to create his electronica soundscape tunes.
His music making started off in “shitty high school bands” playing guitar and bass, he then ditched the ‘band thing’ and started playing mostly alone with his guitar and took up scratch DJing. “I used to really been into hip hop. I started to record scratch music songs, then I found music programs, then I kinda realised I could do it all myself and the scratching thing phased out, then I started making my own songs.” Then instead of searching for samples Yppah just made his own.
Solo work suits Yppah. He confesses that when people are around him when he works “I get real paranoid; I don’t like anybody to hear anything until it’s done.”
In 2006 Yppah released an album with Ninja Tunes entitled ‘You Are Beautiful At All Times’ and is set to release his second album ‘They Know What Ghost Know’ in May this year. His debut has influences of hip hop, psychedelic soul and rock; an emotive electronic landscape that got picked up by the entertainment industry, his songs featuring on CSI, House and a video game.
Soon after his first release he got some of his friends together to translate parts of his songs and they started gigging his tunes live. ‘We Know What Ghost Know’ is spooky and giddy, intimate and epic all at once and has a more live feel. Yppah says he’s “worried it’s too different to the vibe of the first one but it has got a really good reception actually.“
Despite an album release on the cards there is no tour to follow. “I wish there was. I’m getting hit up by a lot of leads in Europe but they don’t follow up. It’s really hard to tour a band right now.”
We could blame the GFC (the Global Financial Crisis bro), but what Yppah voices next is an ongoing complaint for lots of musos out there.
“If you don’t have an agent or know somebody you’re pretty much taken advantage of. You’re not going to be promoted to the point where you can sustain yourself. The money has been coming out of my own pocket for a while.” Yppah hasn’t succumbed to a day job but “is just scraping by.”
Yppah is signed to Ninja Tunes and has taken up their initiative of a Remix Comp. The ‘Yppah Remix Comp’ invites anyone to take a stab at remixing one of Yppah fans’ favourite tunes, ‘Gumball Machine Weekend’. Yppah embraced the idea because “I love remixing a lot, I like to hear people’s interpretations.”
This year Yppah will more than likely make it to Japan, where his biggest fan base lies, to showcase his upcoming album. In terms of fans his home town doesn’t offer much. “I don’t want to sound like I’m making fun of my own city but it’s a very small town. The music scene here is very one dimensional, like mainstream, mostly rap and top 40.” But in his hometown Yppah has his “few people on the same page” and says “as a place to live I love it”.
Yppah’s second album “They Know What Ghosts Know” is set to hit Australia in June and will be distributed to Oz through Inertia.
