Q: Hey, can you tell us a bit about where you come from, and what made you want to start a career in music?
A: We are a London-based band, but none of us are actually English. Instead we all come from different ends of the world (Morocco, India, France and Australia). It was just through a series of fortunate coincidences that we all met each other and decided to embark on this journey together. It started off with Yassine and Krishna convening together at university to play at pubs around London. However, things really took off when Tony and Oscar joined the group. With a full band, we were really able to realise the full potential of the songs we had been writing, especially since Tony and Oscar already have established careers in music.
Despite these coincidental engagements that saw us come together, we all sort of got into music for the same reason. Music has always played a significant role in our lives, whether that was through our parents or using music as a way to connect with people. It provided us with an avenue to channel our thoughts particularly in difficult times. We would write out lyrics and melodies as a form of self-therapy allowing us to verbalise our thoughts and gain better clarity. But what was quite cool about making music was that the messages we instilled in our material were universally relatable because we are all going through similar challenges. The specifics of it may differ, but emotionally we can all empathise with each other using this medium. It was this power and the ability to connect with strangers on a deep level and instil change that really pushed us into pursuing this as a career. We really see it as a way to promote positive change, empathy and help elevate each other.
Q: And what other artists have you found yourself listening to lately?
A: Jack Johnson, Palace, Far Caspian, Michael Kiwanuke, The Lathums, and Bakar
Q: Who were your first and strongest musical influences, and why the name ‘YAZ’?
A: We’d say our strongest musical influence is the Lumineers, which should come as no surprise as they are our favourite artist. Having been avid listeners of their material for the past decade or so, when we started working on our own music we inadvertently found ourselves drawing a lot of inspiration from them. For example, the strong acoustic foundation upon which the rest of the arrangement is built upon is something that is quite prevalent in our music. We always begin shaping our ideas in an acoustic arrangement first before experimenting with different instrumentation. Similarly, their lyrics tend to be deep and introspective, which is one of the main characteristics of our own music. Given that our music is a form of self-therapy, our lyrics tend to be pensive and inward-looking. It is also partly why we are called YAZ as it stands for “You Are Zen”.
Q: You have just released your new single, ‘Beauty Hidden In Pain’. Is there a story behind it?
A: We live in an age where it is easier to be a nihilist or a pessimist than it is to express kindness or practice empathy. It seems everywhere we look, general discourse always tends to focus on the failures. Although discourse is good, the level of negativity that characterises them often comes at the detriment of hope. We seem to be proactive in identifying flaws and sharing criticisms but very little is done to ameliorate them. This new single challenges these pessimistic tendencies.
The idea of the song actually came about towards the end of 2021. Walking around Maida Vale, Yassine took notice of the homeless population within the area. Despite the regrettable conditions, these homeless individuals still had the energy within them to greet passerbyers and wish them well. Moments of deep struggle provide people with two options; to persevere or succumb to the pain. Given the negativity we find ourselves in, one would expect to observe people giving up or hopelessly complaining. However, more often than not, it’s human nature to fight through adversity in the hope that it will get better. In this case, regardless of the deplorable circumstances the homeless individuals find themselves in, they continue to find opportunities to overcome their challenges. The inspiration for the song really stems from this observation. We all face challenges within our lives. Big or small these problems often have considerable impact on our mental state. However, instead of resorting to pessimistic tendencies, the song implores listeners to embrace your vulnerability because it is within moments of deep struggle that we really understand who we are.
Q: Can we expect a new EP or even an album from you in the near future?
A: We have been writing music since 2021, none of which has been released except for the new single. So there is a huge backlog of material that needs to be recorded, produced and released. However, now that we have a brilliant team of believers behind us and supporting us in our journey, we are making a push to get all this material out into the world. Given this, we have two new singles that we are currently working on in the studio that we plan on releasing during the summer and after that hopefully an EP is on the cards. But for the moment, our focus is to get these two singles out to the world and just enjoy the whole process.
Q: What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?
A: For us, the importance of music all rests on the message it is promoting. Like we had mentioned previously, the relatability of our music derives from the fact that we wrote music as a form of self-therapy; a way to try and deal with the frequent challenges that life throws at us. In this day and age, these challenges tend to take on these nihilistic and pessimistic characteristics. They manifest themselves in thoughts that are very self-critical and deny the development of empathy. That is why we see so much unnecessary hate and the proliferation of just general negativity. Therefore our music tries to curb this by instilling empowering themes within the message, calling upon listeners to recognise and embrace positivity.
Given that our music deals with important aspects of the human condition, our sound tends to be somewhat bittersweet and yet hopeful. Drawing on characteristics of indie music, particularly indie folk, the sound is very stripped back allowing us to place the focus on the lyrical message.
Q: Do you feel that your music is giving you back just as much fulfillment as the amount of work you are putting into it, or are you expecting something more?
A: The beautiful thing about music is connecting with complete strangers on an emotional level using a unique medium of communication. You could be performing a cover of a very well known song or your own unreleased original to a group of strangers, and if the material is good, you create this indescribable connection where you are in sync with the people around you. For a brief moment we all set our differences aside and manufacture this community spirit where we are all on the same page. So despite the challenges associated with making a career out of music, this brief moment of connection alone is worth creating music for. We are always reminded of this when we play a live gig, it implores us to call upon why we do what we do. Obviously, we have great ambitions to try and affect change on a grander scale with our music but at the core of it, this connection is what drives us and gives us immense fulfilment. We continue to work hard and put everything we can into creating music as long as we can generate those moments.
Q: Could you describe your creative processes? How do usually start, and go about shaping ideas into a completed song?
A: Our creative process is odd in that the music and lyrics are often developed completely separately from each other. Yassine often has bursts of inspiration where he’ll write down words and lyrics that flood him in that moment on his phone. This could be whole songs or just a few phrases, but it nevertheless exposes and sometimes fleshes out what the general message/theme of the song will be. On the other hand, Krishna comes up with melodies by messing around on the guitar. Noodling around with chords or scales, he usually has a few ideas that he conjures up with a general idea of the kind of emotions he would want the song to evoke. The songs really take shape when both Yassine and Krishna jam together and share their ideas that they’ve been working on. For example, Yassine will sometimes share his new lyrics and Krishna will pick out one of the melodies he’s been working on that roughly matches the emotions of the lyrics and together they start to incorporate their ideas to create a cohesive and coherent song. Once the basic structure and melody of the song are established, Oscar and Tony play the crucial role in materialising the full potential of the song. Their extensive expertise in music and production works wonders when developing a song. Whilst Yassine and Krishna provide the lyrics and general melody/theme of the song, it is really Oscar and Tony that develop the song into what it really is. Their addition of interesting time signatures, chord changes and instrumentation realises the potential of the song.
Q: What has been the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure in your life or music career so far?
A: Committing to a career in music is a big step as we are sure many other emerging artists would agree. Leaving behind the security associated with traditional careers to pursue a dream that has no guarantee of materialising is an incredibly daunting task. It takes a huge amount of confidence and self-belief to commit to such an exercise and that has probably been the greatest challenge we have endured. Despite being in quite a privileged position, we have sacrificed our fair share of things to try and make our dream a reality. Having not seen our friends and families for years, making huge commitments, and working several jobs to try and finance our music have all placed significant pressure on our shoulders. We would be lying if we had not had our own moments of self-doubt, especially when the obstacles seem never ending in the pursuit to creating a successful music career. Nevertheless, despite these difficulties, sharing music and communicating with people around the world on this medium is also what brings us the greatest joy. As challenging as it can be (and sometimes it can really crush your spirit), we are privileged to simply be in this position to try and make a career out of something we truly love and for that we are incredibly grateful.
Q: On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far?
A: This is quite a hard question because we have hit many milestones in the past year, especially with recording, producing and releasing our first single as a band. However, a real turning point for us, especially in terms of facilitating a greater commitment to creating a career in music, would be when we played a sold-out gig at the Troubadour in Earls Court in June 2022. We had organised this whole event and promoted it ourselves in a very limited time frame and to see us sell out such a historic venue was a proud moment. But the memory that sticks out the most from that gig was simply watching the audience engage with all this unreleased music. They picked up on the lyrics very quickly and instantly manufactured this communal spirit where everyone was singing along and enjoying the experience together. To see 150 or so people deeply connect with this material that we simply fabricated in a tiny living room in London was incredibly touching. It was our first taste of witnessing how powerful our music could be and it’s a feeling that we try to replicate everytime we play live now.
