Description
Yokai is a Brussels collective rooted in the jazz, rock and improvised music scenes. A decade after its early Ethio-jazz leanings, the band now occupies a territory entirely its own, where 1980s library-music textures meet a resolutely contemporary sensibility and groove becomes a narrative engine. Following a cycle of concerts around Coup de Grace (2024) marked a turning point: pared down to a six-piece, the group adopted a more instinctive approach, developing new material from improvisation in residencies and creative spaces and letting structures, motifs and atmospheres emerge before shaping them into compositions. Its members also play alongside Nicolas Michaux, Francoiz Breut and Jawhar.
Arguably Yokai's most accomplished project to date, Humboldt is the band's third studio album, exploring a singular language where jazz, psychedelia, dub, experimental rock and cinematic soundscapes meet. Recorded in September 2024 at Free House (Capitane Records) in Brussels, mixed by Pieterjan Coppejans at Robot Studio in Ghent and mastered by Matt Colton at London's Metropolis Studios, it captures a band shedding the superfluous while widening its sonic horizon.
Where Coup de Grace unfolded like a long cinematic narrative, Humboldt moves with more tension, motion and electricity: dub-soaked rhythms, analogue synths, sharp guitars and hypnotic grooves balance raw energy and cosmic drift. The album highlights Axel Gilain's Moog bass and baritone guitar, Yannick Dupont's drums and synths, Eric Bribosia's keyboards and Crumar organ, and Jordi Grognard's tenor saxophone, clarinets, flute and EWI, alongside guitarists Clement Nourry and Ivan Tirtiaux.
The title refers, among other things, to the Humboldt glacier in Venezuela, one of the planet's last tropical glaciers, now doomed to disappear: a discreet echo of the themes of transformation, fragility and uncertainty running through the record, which nonetheless ends on a luminous note. Studio Uberknackig's glitch artwork extends the idea of a world in constant mutation.
