YOYO Docs - Project 17 – Last chapter here Writing the last chapter for our original website in January 2018. When we started out some years ago this was the only place we published anything. We have become more accessible since then and you can follow this journey on several other platforms now. You will find quick links to all these places on our website yoyoxno.com.
Planning is a good thing!
We set out making lots of plans in January 2017. A collaboration that might spread our work to a wider audience on YouTube was one of the plans that we somehow dropped somewhere along the way. Getting fibre for the southern pre-studio didn’t happen since the original partner that offered the best deal was not allowed to do the job. Live band recording in the northern studio did not take place since one Yo couldn’t get there during the summer. But there were other fun things that happened that we more or less stumbled on and it seems we make plans only to move on to the next thing, that turns out to be something totally different.
DIRT – just for you!
What actually did take place in the beginning of 2017 was making and publishing teasers for the songs on our second EP ”DIRT” on YouTube. A new song presented itself and it was skinny and vague and small. Just for you did not carry a single acoustic instrument, it was totally synthetic and stripped down to just a few sounds. It was clearly a contrast to all the songs on ”DIRT” and so we thought it would be a great follow-up to the EP. In order to have two songs on that single we dug up ”Sunny Road” form our unpublished back.catalogue. This song had been recorded using only acoustic sounds as plastic boxes for drums, acoustic guitar, jingle bells and other awkward sounds. It was now re-recorded and converted to the digital world as a companion to ”Just for you”. We set the release date to July as nobody releases anything during summer and we’re nobody.
Get together
In March there was a folk music rewards thing down south and a friend invited one Yo and so the other Yo, living nearby came along. We actually got together a bit before since this also would coincide with the EP release and we took the opportunity to do some promo work. Sitting down playing some songs with just two acoustic guitars was inspiring and we decided to try to do this again, but actually rehearsing the songs before we turned the camera on. We made another interview with Arroe Collins and this time he surprised us with two listeners joining the conversation – lots of fun.
Business cards
We had not placed business cards out in the world since December or January in New Zeeland, so it was about time to start doing this again. First in line was Boston, Massachusetts and a few weeks later Brighton, UK. The songs from our first EP ”Yoyo xno” got their lyric videos on YouTube and we were happy to see that ”Nights with Alice Cooper” radio show shared the link to ”All the way” on their facebook page. During this year it became increasingly more difficult for us to post links to our work in various places with facebook, so we needed all the help we could get. Mirella Catena of ”Mirella overthewall” radio show in Italy helped getting things out and also playing our songs. ”All the way” was in rotation on yet another radio station, this one in Brooklyn, NY, and some more college radio stations in the US wanted our songs for airplay. During summer Isaac Banks of ”Valley FM” and ”Banks Radio” in Canberra, Australia spinned the new single ”Just for you” and we kept receiving lots of appreciation for our work. The business card project continued in August in New York, then Reykjavik, Iceland, and Copenhagen, Denmark. First lyric video from ”DIRT” was released on YouTube and Alice Cooper shared this one as well and now a music blog in Netherlands shared us on Twitter. We decided to start a Twitter account.
Still having fun!
We decided to get together down south to a live acoustic gig in front of a camera, write some new song and scheduled another interview with Arroe for this occasion. Business cards were placed in Düsseldorf, Germany, London UK, where one Yo had a great time visiting the Abbey Road studio and more. Business cards also ended up in Malaga and Seville, Spain and then it was time to get together. We had some great meals, cranked up some old 78 records for inspiration and wrote new songs one after the other. We sat down performing a number of songs that we had decided and rehearsed separately. We had to do them a couple of times until we were satisfied and then worked with the sound files in order to be able to use them further on as live recordings and maybe release them as well. One of the songs ”Leaving everything behind” were completed with both audio and video and published on YouTube.
Transition
Our web guy had found a new service where we could get our music out to all distributors for free. Our releases so far had been delivered through Spinnup and they cost us a bit every year and since this is a no-budget-DIY-project we where naturally interested in this new alternative. We decided to give it a try with a single at first, to see whether it was working. Pondering over what songs to put out we finally concluded that ”Transition” would be a good choice and that it would be fun to create two totally different versions. One Yo worked with the original recording made during our first joint songwriting session back in 2013 when the song was created and the other Yo made a new, even slower version thinking of a folk or country thing with a pedal steel guitar and so forth. This year was coming to an end and that means we needed to promote the Christmas songs again. We got some business cards out in San Francisco, CA and prepared an Instagram account in order to push our music on that platform too. We also made a video Skype interview with Arroe, although the previous interview had not been released yet and since we still want to market our music rather than our faces, we put our sunglasses on. Writing this in January 2018 and still waiting to see if it will get out.
The journey continues…
Well, the pedal steel thing didn’t happen but we found a new voice, Emilia Cleasby, to get some variation in the vocal harmonies and ended up giving her the lead in the slow version. During Christmas holidays we were recording and mixing, sending different versions to each other. In the pre-studio down south the old drum kit standing in the barn was brought in and dusted off to get a signature sound of our own. The new versions of “Transition” were finished in early January as planned and sent to the distributors. Now, the release bounced back. Apparently distributors don’t approve pixilated pictures as sleeve design anymore. The covers that we have been using for our releases carry pictures from the start of this project and since it’s difficult to reach out in todays media flow we’ve kept things more or less the same over the years. Now, this had to change and since we were in transition we got some new photos taken and decided to present the new cover in a YouTube teaser in connection with the release of this single. Writing this just prior to February hoping you like the story – it takes place in real life in various places in the world and you can continue to follow it on our website yoyoxno.com
or on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Yoyoxno/
or on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/yoyo.xno/
or on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Yoyo_xno
…and of course you’re welcome to listen to our music with a streaming service of your choice.
Last chapter of the chronicle at yoyo.xno.se