Yacht
Entry updated 13 March 2017. Tagged: Music.
Also known as YΔCHT. American electropop band, founded by Jona Bechtolt (1980- ). The group is more fully integrated into digital culture than many – initially created for an "art and technology platform" entitled "Crap-tops versus Laptops" organized by New York's Museum of Modern Art, Yacht add Powerpoint presentations, software piracy and integrated blogging and vlogging to the usual recording-and-touring business of being in a band. Their fourth album, See Mystery Lights (2009) is very interested in UFO phenomena. Their most recent release, Shangri-La (2011) spins intriguing variations on both Utopian and Dystopian themes – the opening two tracks are a pairing actually called "Utopia" and "Dystopia" in which the somatic hedonism of youth culture is first celebrated as a secular paradise and then satirized as apocalyptic nihilism ("the Earth is on fire / We don't have no daughter, let the motherfucker burn"). The Satire is not allowed to get in the way of the dance-floor perkiness and likeable melodic ingenuity of the whole. [AR]
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