Sounding Off – Yuzima on "Living Off the Land" EP

NYC based prince of noise Yuzima Phillip speaks about inspiration behind his latest EP Living Off the Land
Atheist
This was the first single. I didn’t really let it out but one of the lines is about Donald Trump “A public demon god entertainment trickster.” The line was sparked by him but used to characterize a complicated relationship with god, devil, morality and entertainment. I also brought in a different guitar sound I’m using Biff Muff pedals through the whole record. I use my version of the Dylan writing approach where he goes for a stretch starting and stopping with verses and building to a crescendo. I felt we needed a modern day approach to examining religion and it’s become popular so I’m happy.

Would It Be Ok
I dreamt this one up, literally. It was vague in a dream and I was singing it. I woke up and then sang it into my recorder. It was actually inspired by a George Benson song and a Bee Gees tune – where the song in my dream was a mix of the two songs, but original. So when I woke up I sang it into my iPhone and put it together, It’s also a riff on the Beatles and that whole “Yellow Submarine” period, I did it in a more minimalist fashion over a drum machine. It’s about just getting away from the complicated, flawed world in good ways and in bad ways.
 

Living Off the Land
I mentioned earlier this year in an interview that I was getting into trap artists like Future, this is me mixing something like that with noise. And a kind of apocalyptic take on the founding of our country, the natives standing on the shore watching the settlers ships come in – a metaphor about the connection of things that started this country and still haunt us like violence – particularly gun violence. There’s even a line “You brought the guns on the rock and roll tour” which is ironic since there was a shooting at a rap show this week. So the song is in many ways prophetic.