We first worked with Yianni in 2000 while recording our first full-length album, The Jefferson Fracture. Yianni seemed to inhabit an entirely different musical and cultural world than we were situated in — most of his projects were dance-pop or hip-hop, when he wasn’t working on Greek pop records that shipped triple platinum.
It was friend and composer David First who recommended Yianni. They both did the bulk of their recording using Logic Audio, which David had been schooling me in for a couple years. But Yianni also had a 24-track 2″ tape machine, which was the format we had been recording TJF in.
David contributed to TJF in a number of capacities and Yianni’s basement studio in Astoria became our NYC locale. We recorded David’s theremin, eBow guitars and meticulous saxophone arrangements (played by Michael Blake and Ulrich Krieger) there.
David also composed synth loops for the song “There There,” which contained all sorts of strange counterrhythms — there were patterns that consisted of 11 or 13 beats over the course of 4 bars. And though we recorded the song to a click track, we neglected to lay down a SMPTE track for MIDI synchronization (though with the amount of vocals and other crap we put on the song, we wouldn’t have had space anyhow). As we started transferring the synth loops that David created in Logic to the 2″ tape, they would slowly become even more off time than they were supposed to be.
So, in one late night session, we watched Yianni in action. Fueled on these amazing iced coffees he made, he would start the synth loops and “punch in” the 2″ tape machine, rolling until the loops got out of sync and then starting over again, sort of like how Johnny Marr’s guitar intro to The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now” was accomplished. (“There There” is up for download here.)
This is Thom’s and my greatest memory of Yianni. He was a sweet guy, very generous and complimentary of others’ talents, but he also relished the opportunity to show off his abilities, which were many.
I hadn’t spoken to Yianni in five or more years, though I meant to get back in touch with him after David told me that he was still around, and they had been working on a new Notekillers record together.
Sadly, Yianni died last week at the incredibly young age of 42. Seeing his two young daughters at his funeral in Astoria yesterday was truly heartbreaking. All I could do was walk up to his casket at the end of the ceremony and offer my thoughts:
“Thanks Dude.”
-David