Pili Coït & Yowie – Split (DUR et DOUX / SKiN GRAFT Records) – “Split? There’s nothing divisive about it”. Where were we? No one ever said it was going to be easy. Split brings together two very inventive, delightfully challenging, hard-boiled bands who both need to be constantly challenging if not reinventing themselves again and again and again and again. Two bands that require us to find different ways to try and dance around their architecture once more to try and write about it, two bands with their first new pieces of 2025.

Split, a split album from Pili Coït and Yowie unveils itself in two distinct permutations – a deluxe two-song 7” coloured vinyl record and a full-length full bodied CD album. I do believe we have already kind of maybe danced around the seven inch and covered it on these fracture pages a couple of weeks back, the full length split album is out later in this fine month of May and if we have it right (and we don’t always have it right as people are always very quick to point out, hell of a lot of pedantic chin stroking trainspotters out there) and if we do have it right Yowie are either dealing with ants or a swarm of flies or a battle between the two parties and as frantically disorganised as ants sometimes appear there is always a purpose, a direction, a method in their apparent madness and if you listen very hard the tune will come to you at last, when all are one, and one is all and well no, you don’t really have to listen very hard, Yowie are always a very easy to listen to, they are an easy listening band, a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now, It probably is just a spring clean for the May queen. Ant music. Pili Coït are up first though… 

“On Split, Lyon France’s minimal love duo Pili Coït fulfil a titillating dream: to go maximal. Following the release of their acclaimed album Love Everywhere, Jessica Martin Maresco and Guilhem Meier criss-crossed Europe and performed an unforgettable run of shows in the USA. Then they opened wide, allowing violin, viola, cello, kaval, bass clarinet and tuba to find just the right spot, blending their slinky-squeaky-scintillating sounds with the polyrhythmic arpeggios of the vocalising guitar-percussion duo. Pili Coït now sleeps with Les Exocrines, and has become an 8-piece mutant orchestra” – Thought they were sounding a tad more exotic, not that they haven’t always been a tad exotic, they have always been rather marvellously exotic and yes of course very French in that melting pot of things that make things French at the moment – that worldly way, that way that pulls all kinds of cultures together. Here, in this expanded format, Pili Coït are sounding even more uniquely unique and as always they sound both uniquely inviting and engaging, brilliant. And yes Pili Coït are at times erotic, their music smells delicious, a melting pot of alchemy and if we do indeed have it right, lets have it right now, no taking liberties, once again sung in Aramaic, the Persian accent does indeed spice up the lyricism and as we wind on down the road again, our shadows taller than our soul, here come Yowie’s swarm of flying ants again and it does make perfect sense that the two of them should be sharing space and three tracks each, they do kind of bend their music in the same kind of way, this all makes perfect sense.

Someone said something about the CD delving “two songs deeper, going under the sheets to a forbidden place where György Ligeti mingles with Oum Kalthoum, sipping lemon-ginger juice and listening to Portishead”, personally I don’t hear anything anywhere near Portishead, i don’t ever want to hear anything anywhere near the overrated middle-class sound of bloody Portisbloodyhead, the sound of the same damn tediously boring album coming out of every room in the student hostel and who needs music reviews? Music reviews are so last century, all you really need from us is a hey, this is damn good, listen to this, listen to how fluid Yowie are, trust us, we’re doctors and I didn’t get where I am today without knowing which way the ants are flying and that they’re always going to get there in their own colourful way and do us all a favour, that music’s lost its taste so try this other flavour, antmusic, antmusic, antmusic, antmusic and by now you’ve surely stopped reading this and cut the the actual bits you can currently hear via Bandcamp safe in the knowledge that everything on the six track CD is as good as the bits you can hear in advance of the release date, do we need a full stop now? Facts you say?

“When we last left Yowie, the band had teamed up with The Jesus Lizard vocalist David Yow as masters of ceremonies on SKiN GRAFT’s excellent Sounds To Make You Shudder! Halloween compilation album. Now, the beast has metamorphosed again, this time forming an international line up, composed of Daniel Kennedy (of Philadelphia’s avant-garde metal act Cleric) and Jack Tickner (of Australia’s microtonal mathcore messiahs Basil’s Kite), along with the OG Defenestrator”. 

It is still unmistakably Yowie, you know it straight away, instantly recognisable, that urgent energy that always sounds so fluid when it surely shouldn’t be? Properly proper forward-thinking progressive math rock and no, you don’t have to be a musician and know how they do it, these people paint, who needs to count? And back we go to the start again for more, once you let it all in it is rather addictive, back to Pili Coït, play it again. The Yowie tracks were recorded before a live audience by the way, in-concert performance of a previously unheard song, as well as a radical reinterpretation of a favourite from their first album, Cryptooology, three tracks recorded at WNUR in Chicago if indeed we do have it right and it is an excellent album, your head will humming, and it won’t go, in case you don’t know, but hay, you surely stopped reading this ages ago and cut to the damn fine music. Two highly recommended bands challenging both themselves and you and me with what surely will be one of the albums of the year when it comes to list these things. Excellent.   

Bandcamp

Previous reading…

ORGAN THING: A Pili Coït vs Yowie split seven inch and album from SkinGraft and Dur & Doux and Bandcamp Friday and for the sake of clarity…

ORGAN THING: We’re not done with the year yet, the new Basil’s Kite album just came out. Chewing Bread is incredibly clever on several levels, mathy, complex, hardcore, almost alien or maybe like some of those strange animals they got down there…

ORGAN: Our best 43 albums of another very musically busy 2024. Who did we rate? The Flying Luttenbachers, Extra life, Earth Ball, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Gazelle Twin, English Teacher, Slift, Uniform…

ORGAN: Our best 43 albums of a very musically busy 2023. Who did we rate?

ORGAN THING: SkinGraft Records, 150 not out, and what gloriously celebration of a compilation album featuring those Flying Luttenbachers, Terms, David Yowie, Bobby Conn, Lovely Little Girls, Pili Co​ï​t, Tijuana Hercules and quite a few more…

ORGAN THING: Let’s go round again, a second deliciously complex, warmly rewarding album from Terms, out on SkinGraft this week. Hear an exclusive track before it hits the streets…

ORGAN THING: Les Secrètes Sessions, The Dur et Doux family and three days of wonderful experimental high level musical creativity…

ORGAN THING: La Fête de la Musique, and it really is a glorious festival of music to explore, a vital compilation album loaded with treasure from Dur et Doux…

ORGAN THING: Dur et Doux do it again, this Odessey & Oracle album is pretty much perfect and yes, “interlacing melodies and impressive psychedelic climates from a varied, blinker-free instrumentarium”