YL Hooi

YL Hooi is the project of Valya Ying-Li Hooi, inhabiting a subtle and mysterious realm of furtive, dubbed-out song, sparse electronic percussion, and distant winds. Active in the Melbourne underground scene since 2017, Hooi is a member of Kallista Kult (with Sam Karmel and Tarquin Manek) and has recorded and performed with artists including Jonnine Standish (HTRK), Jarrod Zlatic (Fabulous Diamonds) and Rohan Rebeiro (My Disco).

Her debut album Untitled (first released on cassette by Altered States Tapes in 2019 and reissued on LP by Efficient Space in 2021) was widely praised, finding a spot on many year-end lists including the number 1 spot on Boomkat’s Discoveries list and being described by Boomkat as ‘an immaculately frayed conception of dubwise dream-pop’. Moving seamlessly from angelic song to gritty tape gunk, Hooi’s work opens onto a multitude of genres and directions while retaining a distinctly personal stamp through her obsessively zoned-out dub production tactics.

“These are songs that seem to emerge in plumes of smoke, magician’s tricks conjured from the ether” (World of Echo)

Silzedrek

Silzedrek is the latest in a long list of aliases of Tarquin Manek. This project was conceived to explore clarinet and bass clarinet in a live setting utilising the Eastern European and Roma sonorities of the artist’s heritage. As a mainstay and central figure in the current Oz underground scene Manek is adept at employing higher dub logic to the rough juxtapositions and seemingly abrupt left turns his performances can take. Ultimately Silzedrek presents a deeply personal synthesis of time-dilating folk-jazz romanticism, heavy chamber dub and sense of smoked out inner space projected to the outer in cosmic proportions. ‘Gwen’s Pen’ was featured in The Wire Tapper 56.