YADi - Gold (The Shining RMX)

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YADi

“…definitely one to keep your eye on.” –  Guardian

“…the next great hope for empowered female pop in the UK.” – Neon Gold

“The best kind of pop” – The 405

Song of the Day – i-D

Poised, petite and powerful, YADi exploded onto the blogsphere last year with ‘Sahara Heart’, a love song set upon the knife-edge of defiance and defeat. It garnered support across the board and quickly became i-D’s ‘Track of the Day’. It’s included on her debut EP ‘Guillotine’ which is released on 9th April.

YADi’s songs are all built around incredibly rhythmic, tribal drum tracks and huge marching beats that herald soaring, deftly created melodies. The subjects of her songs are, like all good pop inspirations, simultaneously drawn from both the personal and universal. The amazing lead track on forthcoming EP ‘Guillotine’ is is about how love, personified in a queen or mother earth figure, conquers all evil. The Guillotine is a brutal image with a positive message, that of destroying anything that is bad. It is set within the metaphor of royalty and class and performed over a delicious mix of rolling piano stabs, military-style drumming and YADi's swollen vocals. ‘Gold’ – all stomping beats and jangling percussion - deals with a deeply personal family tragedy but is constructed like a short film, focusing on “greed and promoting materialism at the cost of human lives.” Elsewhere ‘Paper Rose’ deals with the fragility of human kind over rolling drums.

At just 24, she is a beautiful bundle of contradictions, the product of a genetic cocktail that mixes Algerian on her father's side with Norwegian and Italian on her mother's. For YADi - born in South London - her music is an aural kaleidoscope of influences, one that mixes the music of her heritage with the pop of the future, creating a forward-thinking sound that sets her apart from the crowd.

In the live arena, YADi stalks the stage with a slinky prowess – a feline with the roar of a tiger and a revolutionary zeal. Joining her on stage are Chris Hutchings and Max Taylor, both of whom she met on the thriving London music scene and who cut their teeth in Tom Vek’s band. Her performances, which resonate with a volcanic pulse, a cathartic outpouring of emotion and passion as if her very existence was dependent upon it, have won her many champions including Marina and the Diamonds and CSS, both of whom YADi has supported. Behind her flies the YADi flag, its four colours representing each country that encompasses part of her background.

“Although British, my heritage is a real mix,” YADi says. Her ancestry heavily influences her songs, with the majority of them inspired by the images and sounds of war. Her paternal Grandfather was an Algerian revolutionary, her maternal Grandfather served during the second world war and her Norwegian great-grandfather was in the resistance against the German invasion of Norway. YADi has absorbed all this information and filtered it through a pop prism, mixing fantasy and reality into a heady concoction.

Track Listing
1.       Guillotine
2.       Sahara Heart
3.       Gold
4.       Paper Rose