KING YOSEF: prolific producer (Youth Code, XXXTentacion) dives deep into childhood traumas on new Kurt Ballou-recorded solo album "An Underlying Hum"; teaser video streaming now; US tour with Black Magnet kicks off in March
King Yosef announces the release of his new full-length album, An Underlying Hum, out April 28th on his own Bleakhouse label.
With a formidable catalog of music already under his belt, including collabs with Youth Code and some of the most hyped hip-hop artists of the past decade, the Portland, Oregon-based 25-year-old has been described by Revolver Magazine with these words: "Though he's produced songs for Billboard Hot 100-charting rap artists like the late XXXTentacion and Ski Mask the Slump God, Yosef animates the lo-fi, blown-out brood-scuzz of SoundCloud rap with the vein-popping screams of hardcore and the mechanical noise of industrial."
Recorded and mixed by Converge's Kurt Ballou at GodCity, Yosef's new solo album, An Underlying Hum, is a giant step forward for this prolific artist. A series of seething bangers, laced with ominous melodies and descents into ambient realms, the songs penetrate deep and haunt the skull for days. Impactful from start to finish – from metallic hardcore anthems bouncing with hip-hop swagger, to storms of industrial noise, to ghostly interludes – the album utilizes live instruments, electronic elements, and Yosef's voice to tell its story.
More than a collection of great songs, An Underlying Hum is a deep dive into a broken psyche – a concept album born out of Yosef's quest for self-knowledge. "Five years ago, I was 19, 20, just writing music, just having a good time," he says. "Expressing myself but not necessarily knowing what for. People would ask me what I write about and I kind of came up blank. And it sent me on this whole trajectory, to revisit all these bad things and dive into every single section of it and come out the other side better for it. So, that’s basically what this album started as."
He elaborates: "You grow up in certain environments or certain families that are dysfunctional and it’s generationally dysfunctional. The whole album is like, 'how much of that is in me?' 'How much of this is a decision and how much of this is in my blood?' I went through a process of diving in so deep, it’s bizarre to even look back at it now. All the bad memories and situations of growing from youth to adult. I put the memories into a song. All these things that were stuck in me, they no longer have power over me."
The result is an album that pulls the listener into the depths and absolutely crushes with music that will resonate equally amongst fans of Death Grips, Code Orange, or Nine Inch Nails. An Underlying Hum is a document of this tremendous young talent looking inward and taking control of his own narrative, as an artist and a human.
In addition to Ballou's engineering and mixing, vocal production was handled by Steve Evetts (Deadguy, Sepultura) and the album was mastered by Alan Douches (Chelsea Wolfe, Xiu Xiu).
Stay tuned for the album's first single and music video, dropping soon.
A US tour with Black Magnet begins March 1st:
March 1 - St. Louis, MO @ The Sinkhole
March 2 - Chicago, IL @ Reggies
March 3 - Louisville, KY - Mag Bar
March 4 - Indianapolis, IN @ Black Circle Brewing
March 5 - Cleveland, OH @ No Class
March 7 - Providence, RI @ Dusk
March 8 - Northampton, MA @ Red Kross
March 9 - Brooklyn, NY @ Saint Vitus Bar
March 10 - Boston, MA @ O'Brien’s Pub
March 11 - Philadelphia, PA @ Ortlieb’s
March 12 - Richmond, VA @ Fallout
March 14 - Atlanta, GA @ Boggs
March 15 - New Orleans, LA @ The Goat
March 16 - Houston, TX @ The End
March 17 - San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger
March 18 - Austin, TX @ Club Eternal
March 19 - Dallas, TX @ Division Brewing
An Underlying Hum tracklist:
1) Frame
2) Cascade of Doubt
3) Echo
4) Power
5) Nameless
6) 110817
7) Drift Below
8) Adrienne
9) Pulling at a Thread
10) The Crevice / Light Seeps In
11) An Underlying Hum
Photo of King Yosef, by Harper King
Cover art, by King Yosef
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