Premiere: Yuni Wa ‘Love’
Little Rock producer Yuni Wa continues his celestial voyage across the fault lines of house, hip-hop, and electronica on his new 12-track LP, ‘The Kingdom We Built’
Yuni Wa will release his new album, ‘The Kingdom We Built’, via DIIVINITY SOUND on 14th July. Listen to ‘Love’ below.
Future funk monolith Yuni Wa chases last month’s ‘As It All Unfolds’ EP, along with previous singles including ‘Star System Heartbreak’ and ‘The Space Base’, with an galactic 12-track tape that proves the Arkansas-native must not sleep.
Effortlessly braiding strands of electronic, hip-hop and experimental music, ‘The Kingdom We Built’ is a testament to an artist who’s been delivering consistently distinctive dance music for over a decade and whose alias (short for “Yunibasaru”) fittingly translates to “universal” in Japanese.
Early singles ‘Politics’ and ‘Birth’, both released last month, positioned the album as acutely towards social and philosophical exposition as the dancefloor, interrogating the facets of society through boundary-pushing soundscapes and subtle reimaginings of house and hip-hop tropes. Speaking on the album’s concept, Yuni Wa said, “The title refers to the systems we’ve constructed and coexist within society, and how we owe it to ourselves to try and improve those systems.”
‘Industry’ is built on an understated techno pulse, its melodic lead flits and vocal glitches leading it further away from the nostalgic aesthetics of synthwave and lo-fi towards something more ethereal and cerebral, while ‘Love’ feels like a darker, headier successor to ‘Easy’ – a bright future funk cut from 2015’s ‘Ethereal Lover’. Yuni Wa’s allegiance to transformation and evolution, and seamless switching across the intersections of dance music are more marked here than ever, as the producer imagines what a world without restrictions to freedom might look and sound like.
Yuni Wa is set to perform amidst a stacked bill at Arkansas’ Format festival in September, which will welcome big-hitters including Little Simz, Sudan Archives, and Poolside (DJ set) to the Southern state.
‘The Kingdom We Built’ is set for release on 14th July. Listen to ‘Love’ below.
