The 10 best songs by Yves Tumor

‘Hope in Suffering (Escaping Oblivion & Overcoming Powerlessness)’ (2018)

Even though Safe in the Hands of Love is stylistically all over the place, nothing can quite prepare you for the extreme left turn that happens in the second half of the record when ‘Hope in Suffering’ arrives. Designed to catch the listener off guard, this droning noise track will punish you, drag you around kicking and screaming, and have you feeling like all of your energy reserves have been sapped by the end of its five-minute runtime.

Featuring guest vocals from Oxhy and co-produced by Danish noise artist Puce Mary, this is Tumor at their most visceral and grotesque. The discomforting violins, constant buzzing, and howled lines that evoke images of decay, destruction, and disfigurement all add to an atmosphere that you can’t wait to escape, and yet, you can’t help but be enthralled by its horrors.

‘Stunts’ (2011)

Technically not an Yves Tumor song, ‘Stunts’ was released under Sean Bowie’s earlier moniker of Teams on their Dxys Xff album, but it has a number of the Yves Tumor hallmarks present that it becomes easy to see how the progression from one project to another came around. There’s a hypnagogic quality to the chillwave-inspired cut, which has been revisited on some of the dreamier cuts of their recent work, but listening back in 2025, it’s certainly the sort of track that screams 2011.

Yes, they’ve demonstrated a great deal of evolution since then, but context is important when getting to understand Yves Tumor’s work, and knowing where the wide array of influences all stemmed from helps paint a clearer picture of what you can begin to anticipate from their output. You may have been surprised when elements of funk and disco started appearing on recent albums, but knowing that this is what Bowie was making in their earlier years helps make sense of it.

‘Jackie’ (2021)

Perhaps the most conventional and straightforward song that they’ve ever released, ‘Jackie’ and the accompanying The Asymptotical World EP provided a perfect link between Heaven to a Tortured Mind and where they would eventually go on follow-up album Praise A Lord…. It has the same glam rock swagger underpinning it that a number of songs on the album before had, but also throws in elements of trip-hop and glistening pop.

If that sounds disarming in any way, it shouldn’t. Given how many abstractions their music has been subjected to in the past, and how many different genres they’ve successfully dipped their toes into, having a song that brings them all together harmoniously was the next logical step to take, and rather than having albums that skittishly jump from one place to another, why not have them all bounce off each other as one coherent idea?

Simply put, it’s Tumor in a nutshell, and it’s brilliant.

‘Limerence’ (2015)

On their debut album, When Man Fails You, Tumor largely delivered pretty, but largely dismissible, ambient sound collages that were akin to their peers such as James Ferraro. It wasn’t yet as refined as later works in this vein would prove to be, but sat in the middle of the album’s tracklist is a song that has gone on to become one of their most adored songs.

Built around a softly lilting synth arpeggio, ‘Limerence’ could easily be mistaken for a Boards of Canada or Steve Reich composition, and as the candid vocal samples that are clearly lifted from home videos kick in, you’re transported to a place of pensive reflection and calmness. Something feels incredibly familiar about the song from early on, and as a song to bliss out to, this is arguably the most strangely comforting thing Tumor has put their name to.

‘Heaven Surrounds Us Like A Hood’ (2023)

Praise A Lord… is as close as we’re going to get to an all-out weirdo rock record from Tumor, and its shining moment is as extravagant as one could want from them. Blending together the earlier sound collage elements with psychedelic flourishes and plenty of Prince worship, ‘Heaven Surrounds Us Like A Hood’ is the sound of an artist reaching the peak of their confidence, and establishing their no-holds-barred approach to genre fusion as something that a wider audience can appreciate.

There are points at which the crackles from samples can be heard, similarly to some of their earlier collages, but when they’re pitted against the crispness of the production in other parts, it makes the more fragmented elements stand out even more. These are delicate touches that not everyone will appreciate, but for those who have marvelled over the experimental nature of Tumor’s music since the start, hearing them in this new environment brings us full circle, allowing you to really soak up just how much of an evolution they’ve gone through.

‘E. Eternal’ (2017)

Where When Man Fails You failed to grab listeners, Experiencing the Deposit of Faith manages to make the environments created by Tumor’s collages instantly more engaging. There are more layers to indulge in when losing yourself in each song, and on ‘E. Eternal’, what could have just been a looping acoustic guitar line playing out for the whole song is delicately wrapped up in swaths of cavernous echoes, crowd noises, roaring fires and choral chanting.

There’s something special about the way in which each new layer is introduced, and how they each gradually ebb away, and over the course of the song, you feel as though you’ve gone on an entire journey towards enlightenment. Tumor is truly fantastic at carving out these particular atmospheres, and while the oblique and repetitive nature of a track like this might be a turn-off for some, when it does manage to hit, it’s a luxurious listening experience.

‘Gospel For A New Century’ (2020)

Safe in the Hands of Love had a pretty bombastic opener that set the tone for the surreal soundscapes of the album, but in an evident attempt to one-up themselves, Heaven to a Tortured Mind has an even more bombastic entrance. If you told me that a wrestler had used this to soundtrack their approach to the ring, I’d genuinely applaud the decision, because there’s a swagger and sense of bravado to ‘Gospel For A New Century’ that instantly makes you feel like you’re the shit.

Of course, it isn’t as straightforward as that. The chopped-up horn samples often come across as being dissonant and out of place, and there’s a trippiness that can be jarring at first. Not only that, but there’s an air of seduction about Tumor’s vocal delivery, and the bassline that wanders around underpinning these disparate elements does a great job of further emphasising the song’s sexiness. It’s confident, but still maintains a level of mystery, and that only makes you want to absorb more of it.

‘The Feeling When You Walk Away’ (2016)

Another sultry effort from Tumor from their breakthrough record, Serpent Music, ‘The Feeling When You Walk Away’ stumbles along with its quasi-trip-hop beat, while a funky guitar lick moans over the top and breathy falsetto occasionally rears its head. It sounds like standard fare for them given what we’ve come to expect from them on subsequent releases, but at the time, it was truly the sign of an artist who was ready to offer a truly unique spin on genre experimentation.

There’s nothing complex about the song, but there is an instant charm to how it feels like someone has placed a recording device in the centre of a room and captured a band figuring out how to make magic together. Everything is, of course, deliberate in its placement, but something about the song feels so spontaneous and accidental, and when you can manage to conjure that feeling up in such a seemingly effortless manner, you know you’ve struck gold.

‘Noid’ (2018)

As peculiar as parts of the record are, ‘Noid’ is the most obvious hit that Safe in the Hands of Love had to offer, and was the first moment where we began to get a glimpse of Tumor’s rebirth as a rock deity. Where much of their early work was sluggish in terms of its tempo, we’re instead treated to a track that gleefully bounds about to frantic snares and a warping string sample, and this newfound energy is arguably what catapulted further into spotlight.

There’s also something about the naivete of the vocal delivery on ‘Noid’ that exudes charm, and while some listeners might argue that it’s preferable to hear someone competently hold a tune rather than strain to hit a series of notes, the half-spoken method that Tumor uses only adds to the oddball charm of the song. This is a perfect example of how you make strangeness satisfying, and how to use your experimental tendencies to manufacture a truly captivating pop song.

‘Kerosene!’ (2020)

If you’d told me in early 2020 that the next Yves Tumor album was going to feature a hair-raising guitar solo, I’d have seriously wondered if the imposed lockdown was eating away at your mental well-being. Nevertheless, on ‘Kerosene!’, this is exactly what we received, and if isn’t the most extravagant and electrifying thing that Tumor has ever done, it ought to be commended at the very least.

Working its way up from being a gentle offering of dreamy psychedelia, the song erupts after a minute and a half, and Tumor ends up transforming into the most fearsome shredder you’ve heard. There’s so much passion and unfiltered desire to blow the listener away packed into the lead break alone, and while it takes you by complete surprise on the first listen, you’ll find yourself wanting to revisit it repeatedly afterwards and be left stunned over again. The road from calmness to chaos and finishing with a sigh of relief might be an unpredictable arc for the song to follow, but that’s exactly what makes it so majestic.