Jonah Yano souvenir

Meet Jonah Yano, the Toronto based singer, songwriter, whose journey into
music began with recording music using his cellphone in 2016. Having played
piano and guitar as a child, it wasn’t until Yano moved from Vancouver to
Toronto in 2016 that he began putting his songs online, catching the eyes of
Toronto’s thriving local music scene. Spending the next couple of years obsessively songwriting and practicing vocals, and learning technical skills, he
collaborated with Toronto duo MONEYPHONE on the 2018 song “On Lock”
which became an underground success. Shortly after, Yano released his first
solo single “Rolex, the Ocean'' with producer Joseph L'etranger. Once he
began writing his full EP, he was introduced to frequent collaborators
BADBADNOTGOOD, who are featured on the EP’s title track, “nervous.” Yano’s
work has garnered praise in major music publications like The Fader,
Billboard, Complex, and Exclaim and the attention of Virgil Abloh and Gilles
Peterson along with millions of streams on Spotify and Apple Music. Most
recently, Yano released a highly praised cover of the Majestic’s “Key to Love
(Is Understanding)” also with BADBADNOTGOOD, finding himself in the
natural position of writing the feature length album, 2020’s souvenir.
Following a highly acclaimed 2019 which included the release of an EP
nervous, collaborations with BADBADNOTGOOD, MONEYPHONE, and Nono;
industry praise from The Fader, Billboard, High Snobiety, NME, KCRW and
Exclaim — it’s not a stretch to say Jonah Yano’s highly anticipated debut
feature album souvenir took a lifetime to make.
Yano’s souvenir, mixes his soulful, genre blurring vocals with searing, personal
lyrics. With collaborations from talents like producers Monsune ("strawberry!," "delicate"), Leland Whitty of BADBADNOTGOOD ("poor me," "monarch,"
"anywhere"), and Jacques Greene ("what i can do to help"), souvenir touches
on themes of family separation, healing, and reconciling with the past.
With each track delving into Yano’s personal history, the album tells the story
of his parents separation and absence of his father from his life through the
perspective of each of his family members. Following the separation of his
parents in 1998 in Hiroshima and subsequent move to Vancouver, Yano spent
years with very little connection to his father beyond occasional calls and
birthday presents.
Having not seen each other in 15 years, Yano visited his father in Nagato in the
fall of 2019 with the goal of making sense of their complicated relationship
through music. Both being avid musicians, Yano then incorporated some of
his father’s earlier recordings into his own, while making peace with their
past. The result — the album’s final track, “shoes,” featuring his father Tatsuya
Muraoka and written by him about a pair of shoes he purchased for Yano as a
child. Most of the track was recorded live at some point in the 1990’s in
Hiroshima, with Yano’s own vocals filling gaps between his father’s vocals.
Recording the album in Tokyo’s Red Bull studios, a log cabin in Nagato, Toronto’s Studio 69, and his own home — the intensely personal album incorporates
Yano’s unique sound with a deeply relatable concept, making it the natural
follow-up to an already impressive catalogue.