YĪN YĪN – ‘Yatta!’ album review: A trip through Southeast Asian psychedelia via the Netherlands
It has been nearly seven years since the genre-defying Netherlands outfit YĪN YĪN unleashed their endlessly expansive sound onto the world, and from the sounds of their newly released masterpiece Yatta!, the group has never ceased expanding upon their sonic repertoire since.
The Skinny: Psychedelic albums aren’t the novelty that they once were, within the modern musical age. It sometimes seems as though anybody with enough guitar pedals and an Afghan coat can – and has – start a psych project, but YĪN YĪN have never particularly subscribed to the oversimplification of that avenue of artistic expression. Since their very beginning, the Dutch group have struck upon some of the most far-out, mind-bending sounds recorded since LSD’s first advent back in the 1960s.
On Yatta!, the group expand upon those psychedelic roots even further, incorporating their typical Southeast Asian influences with the compelling grooves of electronica, the riffs of surf rock and, at its core, the irrefutable grooves of disco. Not only is the album a revelatory trip through a kaleidoscope of global influences, then, but it is also a record which commands you to move your body to the groove.
It is far too often the case with outfits of YĪN YĪN’s ilk that their material comes across, while very instrumentally impressive, as rather pretentious and full of itself. Whereas, at the heart of this record appears to be an unshakable and utterly euphoric sense of musical celebration, of which everybody is invited to partake in. With its all-embracing range of sounds and influences, there is surely something that everybody can get on board with, encased within the album’s grooves.
What’s more, it manages to maintain a common throughline across the tracklisting, without ever nailing itself to one particular sound. As a result, Yatta! Has a strong sense of narrative and cohesion throughout, which is likely helped along by the fact that the record was self-produced, and that makes those 11 tracks flow beautifully into one another.
The Verdict: During an age in which albums are increasingly sounding the same, YĪN YĪN reaffirm their dedication to originality and psychedelic innovation, creating a record which defies national borders and sonic conventions in equal measure, and is equally suitable for a stoned picnic here on Earth or an intergalactic disco out in the stars.
Defining track: ‘Spirit Adapter’
Release Date: January 23rd, 2026 | Producer: YĪN YĪN | Label: Glitterbeat
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