bottin: y-a-m-l

"Y-A-M-L" has nearly 10 years of history behind it. Bottin produced most of the instrumental almost a decade ago when he had bedroom studio and his girlfriend at the time came up with the "You are my love" (hence the title 'YAML') hook and the first notes of the melody. The song is about a somewhat destructive yet playful relationship: the girl is willingly submissive and mixes reality with her dreams - she portraits her lover as dominant while she's in fact leading the game. Bottin tried to record it, but something wasn't quite right and struggling to find the right singer for the project the song was put on hiatus. Cut to nearly a decade later and a final mixdown was completed at Waterland Studios - a unique recording studio in the historic center of Venice, Italy. During those 10 years the melody, lyrics and even singers changed many times until finally Bottin enlisted his Bowie-obsessed friend Lavinia Claws (she previously sang on his track "Lies" from the LP Punica Fides). Lavinia helped out with the final lyrics and recorded the vocals in Berlin. Lavinia will also be starring in the forthcoming music video of the song. The flipside of the record, "Roulez Jeunesse," is Bottin's soundtrack to an imaginary amusement park. The exact origin of the French saying "Roulez Jeunesse" isn't known but it evokes the rides and bumper cars in fairs. The ride operator would yell 'Roulez jeunesse!' when everyone was locked in. The expression is now commonly used to mean that you're all set to go. The title seems fitting given the propulsive space disco vibe of the track which also includes a sample from an interview with Dan Lacksman from Telex (remember their classic track Moscow Disko?) talking about synthesizers, saying that there's a musical groove within the machines themselves.