Big Hassle Media NY
40 Exchange Pl, Ste. 1900
New York, NY 10005
P 212.619.1360
Big Hassle Media LA
3685 Motor Ave Suite 240.
Los Angeles, CA 90034
P 424.603.4655
Ridegwood, Queens duo YO KINKY met at the start of 2020, bonding over shared musical interests, and immediately started working on songs together. Over the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, Laura Wight and Tom Unish self-produced and recorded their self-titled debut EP. This collection of songs addresses trust, communication, love, loneliness, freedom, identity, and expectation. The two-piece incorporates drum machines and buzzing, dissonant, squelching keyboards with guitars that alternately shimmer and shake with reverb and delay. Recorded and mixed by Unish, Wight handled the lyrics while Unish performed the instrumentation. Her bright vocals are delivered with a conversational precision that calls to mind acts like X, Sleaford Mods, and Blondie.
Opener “Wire” finds Wight singing , “Anyone can tell I’m in love with you/ Anyone can tell when a love is true” over a propulsive and slinky rhythm. The sound is warm and concentrated recalling early trip-hop, yet it is not an exercise in nostalgia. Instead, “ Wire” sounds like a track from some dark but ravishing future, as the upward slides on the word “true” resonate long after the song ends.
The lead single to YO KINKY’s debut EP, “Someone I Used to Know” expands the stereo image, with a wide wall of undulated guitars carrying Wight’s sweet and acerbic vocals, of a simultaneously interrogative and disengaged nature. While the lyrics may appear dark, Wight’s deep playfulness keeps things buoyant and seductive.
Next track “Lonely Love” takes things further with grimy allusions to maintaining the survivalist grind of prison life while dreaming of better days to come. Furnished with a British-tinged declarative style, Wight spits, “When I get out I’ll be king again, of my pen, of my bright young women/ Lonely love, I got a lonely love on my mind/ Sittin’ around and holdin’ tight, ‘til the might is right.”
The EP turns a corner with “Resistance” where streets now represent endless possibilities: “Pick me up, swing me off my feet/ Twirl around, love is all I breathe/ Everybody’s just around the corner now/ Everything I need is just a short walk down the street.” Here Wight embraces gratitude, “sans resistance.”
Infused with a saucy, baffled sentimentality about growing up in Los Angeles and facing the bewildering forward rush of time, the final song “Stretch” closes the record on a note that is reflective yet hopeful, and ultimately, resilient.
With the return of live shows in the upcoming months, YO KINKY anticipates playing local, nationwide and beyond.
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