FOONYAP

6. FOONYAP, Palimpsest. Speaking of Tanya Tagaq, here’s this year’s model. Classically trained violinist, redoubtable vocalist and electronics tinkerer Foon Yap has delivered an arcane, completely original whopper of a solo debut that will, mark this writer’s words, propel her onto the world stage if and when it gets passed around to the right people. It ain’t easy but it’s amazing once you get it. So start passing it around. Björk started somewhere. - Toronto Star

Foon Yap describes herself as a naturally eccentric person. She embraces that fact in her music, but owning that uniqueness didn’t come easy. Growing up in the Roman Catholic faith as a daughter of Chinese immigrants, Yap (then Carol Yap) didn’t feel she could express herself.

“As a young, naive person, and a girl at that, it was really hard for me to be myself because those systems don’t necessarily encourage people, and especially young women, to have any sense of creativity or express their individuality or sexuality in any sort of way,” she said.

“I often felt a huge sense of shame, like something was wrong with me, that I was too emotional, too sensitive. On one hand I really wanted to fit in, but on the other hand I just couldn’t.”

On her new album Palimpsest (under the name FOONYAP), she uses music to confront and move past those experiences, things she was holding onto years after they happened.

Yap started classical violin at four years old. Though she was a musical child, Yap hated the stress and competition that came with lessons. She also didn’t feel free to use her own voice.


“There’s not really room for improvisation with the classical music world. There’s no experience to make your own music,” she said.

That stress was compounded by religious and cultural expectations. Her childhood was marked by the clash between Old World values and western conventions.

Yap still distinctly remembers the moment she started to push back. Sitting on her bed at age 12 she realized she could make up her own mind about things.

“That was a very dangerous moment,” she said.

At age 14, she left the church. Later, she quit her classical violin training. In Grade 12, she dropped out of high school. It was a scary decision, but a huge step in her journey of self discovery.

“It was quite a freeing experience for me to disappoint everyone in my life and start from scratch and to finally be free of expectation,” she said.

Since then, she’s worked to process her past. At almost 30, it’s an ongoing process but Palimpsest is a major milestone.

Yap traces some of her music-making style to doing her own thing when she was supposed to be practising.

“I wasn’t until my early 20s that I started playing in metal and punk and in Woodpigeon, an indie rock band, that I started to realize that a lot of that messing around was really my own voice trying to break free.”

She’s been preparing for the release of Palimpsest for four years. Its creation began at a tumultuous time for Yap. Her band FOONYAP and the Road had ended, she travelled the world, she finished her degree and she was completely worn down. To that point, she had approached everything she did with a crippling sense of perfectionism.

“My body just broke down. For two years I struggled with tendonitis in both arms. There was a period that I couldn’t walk, and I realized that I was working this hard because I felt like if I didn’t achieve something I didn’t deserve to be loved,” she said.

Palimpsest is a vulnerable exploration of those feelings. She may still have work to do, but the album is a statement of empowerment. On it, her violin becomes an instrument of expression instead of oppression. Her beautiful eccentricity is front and centre. Her Chinese heritage is showcased, but on Yap’s own terms.

It’s work that expresses exactly who Yap is at this moment in her life. Palimpsest comes out on Oct. 21 and Yap performs it in Saskatoon the following night. She recreates the album with “the most advanced loop pedal you can buy” and allows the songs to become something different in the live environment. Yap said being on stage is one of the few places where she feels completely at peace with herself.

“When I perform I always perform for myself and I invite audience members into that space with me. I find a really safe and respectful place to be. I think people want to experience someone being authentic because it helps them be authentic with themselves.” - Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Calgary-based artist and violin prodigy FOONYAP has a new music video for "THE FUN MACHINE," from the upcoming album Palimpsest, premiering today on The FADER. Director Katie Yuen's animated clip depicts an angular metropolis and a doomed affair between a cold, triangular creature and a loyal companion. But thanks to FOONYAP's song – a tense and bespoke mixture of swampy electronics, strings, and vocals that flash with a bold, volcanic brilliance, like a folkier Braids – the story's unhappy ending feels promised from the jump.

"'THE FUN MACHINE' explores notions of free will within relationships," FOONYAP told The FADER over email. "I've observed that humans can hurt or betray each other, not out of malice, but out of fear. We feel vulnerable when we're in love, reverting at times to programmed defensiveness.” Watch the video above and grab Palimpsest on October 21. - The FADER

Carol Yap is gunning for the area in her live performances where the unexpected and imperfect crash into each other headfirst.

“People respond to authenticity and they respond to vulnerability,” Yap said this week from a tour stop in Kamloops. “And they both require a lot of courage to display publicly.”

Courage and perseverance play central roles in Yap’s journey to create a musical identity as the artist FOONYAP. She hasn’t fully realized her dream just yet, but she’s already winning given that her current guise — think a violin-playing Björk, but without the dance beats — bears little resemblance to her younger self.

That’s a victory in Yap’s mind.

Yap, 29, was raised in a strict Chinese-Catholic household by immigrant parents, who enrolled her in violin lessons at the age of four. By the time she was 11, Yap was taking courses at the Royal Conservatory of Music.

With the immense pressure from her parents, Yap felt there was little room for error, in life or music.

“I come from a very hyper-critical culture, very competitive. I always felt a sense of inadequacy — I was never good enough, no matter what I did, and the environment I grew up in encouraged that feeling.”

Though it took years, Yap eventually defied nearly everyone around her. She left school, stopped going to church and quit playing the violin. It’s clear by talking with Yap, who answers questions thoughtfully and at a measured pace, that the emotional scars from her past are many and complicated (it has been suggested that her upbringing shared elements with that described in Amy Chua’s controversial book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother).

And yet Yap remains in Calgary, despite the memories the city triggers. “I think it’s more important to develop who I am. That’s more important than where I am,” she said.

“There may come a time when I need to relocate, but for now, this whole process and journey is internal. It doesn’t really matter where I live. I can sit and face those feelings anywhere.”

Palimpsest, a singularly brave piece of explorative art released in October, took Yap four years to complete. It’s no wonder, with songs such as Woolf and Plath (with the lyrics: “Come back to me, I’ll be your heart/I’ll beat for you when life is too hard”) and #2 (“When I call, no one comes/When I fall, no one runs”).

The motivation behind the album and the redemption that has come with it is not spelled out in her lyrics; rather, she uses interviews with the press as a window into her pain. Through the media, her story is getting out and Yap is discovering that fans are coming to her shows to share their own stories.

“It doesn’t matter what background they come from, they recognize that the emotional pain has perhaps carried through and impacted their decisions as an adult.”

Palimpsest isn’t about lamenting over what came before, Yap said. It’s about recognizing the shame and alienation she felt as a child, and making decisions to move beyond it as an adult.

“It can be viewed as a rebellion, of course. But I think the deeper meaning is realizing, as you’re growing up, that the rebellion is actually happening inside your head. It’s very painful to go back and rewrite the emotional patterns that you carried into your adulthood. How do I rewrite that script and make decisions from now on?”

Her live performances offer no emotional easy way out. FOONYAP concerts are draining for both her and her audience, Yap said. But she is left with a positive feeling afterwards. “This has been a very therapeutic process.”

The tour to support Palimpsest brings Yap to Victoria for what will be her local debut as FOONYAP (she has played Victoria previously as a member of Calgary indie folk act Woodpigeon). She will sing and play her violin through a series of loop pedals, which allow her to accompany herself on guitar. The end result will be a singular piece of art, warts and all.

That is precisely what Yap is trying to accomplish at this stage in her career: Art for art’s sake, no apologies.

She still struggles with a lingering sense of perfectionism, but that feeling is dwindling as she matures.

“I very consciously have to make a decision when I’m performing that I’m not performing to play all the notes correctly, that I’m performing to express myself. And I struggle with that every single day and every single performance.

“I really make a commitment whenever I perform to perform from the space where I write music from. As long as I do that, I always have a good show, no matter what else is happening.” - Victoria Times Colonist

Ever feel as if you’re living your life for one moment?

You feel it coming, you certainly know when it’s arrived, and it’s ultimately what defines you to you.

Sitting with Foon Yap in bustling, boisterous 17th Avenue S.W. coffee shop Analog there’s very much the sense she’s nearing hers.

The Calgary artist is emotional on this afternoon, partially due to the fact that she’s recently strained her voice, making the conversation one at close quarters in order to be heard among the din. But mainly it’s because on Thursday she’ll release her debut album Palimpsest recorded under her musical moniker FOONYAP with a show at the Ironwood.

It is a stunning, stirring, naked, haunting, tortured and resounding artistic statement that defies classification, requires no clarification of the remarkable soul, spirit and depth that went into its uniqueness.

Fitting, actually, because it is a record, she says, that is “everything about letting things happen and going with the flow” — personally, musically, emotionally.

“So much of growing up I always tried too hard and always tried to fit in,” she says.

“It was really tough because in one sense I wanted to fit in, but I just had this part of myself that couldn’t be happy doing all the things that were expected of me. It took a long time to get to where I am now.”

Foon’s journey began with her growing up in a strict Chinese Catholic household, pushed into violin lessons at the age of four, forced to continue down the path toward the Mount Royal Conservatory of Music even after she’d lost all love of the instrument, it becoming work, something she resented.

“I just wasn’t suited for the classical world, but I wasn’t allowed to quit because I was very talented,” she says non-boastfully. “My whole life revolved around classical violin, every hour.”

She hit her breaking point on every level in Grade 12. Suffering from bulimia at the time and sick of the push and pull in her life, Foon dropped out of high school, dropped out of the conservatory, “and basically just shattered all my parents’ expectations.”

“Which is a very freeing thing to do,” she says, admitting it’s taken some time but she has reconciled with her folks.

“But that was when I began to live my life for myself. That’s over 10 years ago. The last 10 years has been about finding my voice.”

She laughs at the irony considering her recent predicament.

Foon credits her time in local band Woodpigeon — the ongoing, ever-evolving project of the now-Montreal-based Mark Hamilton — with helping her discover a love of music and performance again. That, in turn, led to her own band, the brash, electro-punk-centric Foonyap and the Roar, which earned some love in the city’s scene.

She began, however, turning all of her time, energy and attention into this project, writing and recording it with only production help supplied by partner and former bandmate Mike Gratton.

She obsessed over it, took more than a year to write and record it.

Musically, she poured into it everything from her classical background, her chamber folk time in Woodpigeon and her electro past to her love of punk and post-punk, acts such as the Talking Heads, The Mekons and Nina Hagen.

It’s also informed by other diverse areas of her life such as her appreciation for literature and art, feminist writers such as Anne Sexton and Kathy Acker, as well as meditation and Eastern philosophies.

But mainly Palimpsest is filled with Foon.

She calls it a very “very inward looking album,” one that’s also imbued with more of that seeking and searching that grew out of dealing with other things over the past few years of her journey, including a huge setback marked by serious health issues that included tendinitis in both arms, and mentally just being “burnt out” and exhausted from the strain of always pushing herself.

“I really had to just take a step back and realize that — and it was a very painful thing to admit to myself — the reason why I always work so hard is because at the root of it, I don’t believe I’m ever good enough. That’s a really painful thing to admit.”

Is the release of Palimpsest an indication she now thinks she is?

“It’s a struggle,” she says faltering briefly and apologizing again for the emotion.

It’s an unnecessary apology.

Because ultimately that’s what makes Palimpsest so successful is how naked and vulnerable it is, how simply human and personal it is.

That’s why people will connect with it on all and every level now, finally, a full year after its completion and more than two years after its conception.

“At some point you just have to let go. And this is it,” Foon says composing herself, looking forward to the release date and the touring that will follow.

“These songs need to be shared with the world … It’s taken me such a long time to get here and I’m only halfway through. A release is only the beginning of a year-and-a-half’s worth of sharing my music with as many people as possible. So I’m only halfway through my journey.”

But nearer to that moment. - Calgary Herald

What’s the deal?

Classically trained violinist, electronics maestro and reliably breathtaking vocalist Foon Yap has collaborated with Woodpigeon and Art Bergmann, soundtracked films by Anne Koizumi and played self-described “vampire sex metal disco” with Calgary’s now-defunct FOONYAP and the Roar, but she made a point of withdrawing into herself and finding her own voice on her brilliant new solo debut, Palimpsest.

Indeed, the proud assertion of Foon’s own identity in defiance of shame and emotional pain lingering from a repressive upbringing spent hustling back and forth between violin practice and a traditional Chinese-Catholic household is one of this moving and utterly unique record’s major themes. And FOONYAP’s musical identity is hers and hers alone to claim here; Palimpsest moves fluidly and confidently from whispery acoustic folk to electro-gilded avant-classical deconstructionism to obsidian New Wave as if it was perfectly natural to do so. And, in FOONYAP’s talented hands, it is perfectly natural to do so.

Like Foxtrott’s 2015 stunnerA Taller Us or Bjork’s recent output, Palimpsest’s meticulous genius only reveals itself with some investment on the listener’s part. This is patient music for patient people. “Gabriel Moody,” for instance, unspools uncertainly over eight minutes, with nothing but haltingly plucked strings and FOONYAP’s unguarded singing (in French, of course) to keep you company until a winding violin melody comes in at the halfway point, nudging you toward a breathtaking chorale of overdubbed voices that finally brings the track to a climax at the six-minute mark.

Accept the challenge once and you’ll find it very easy to return to FOONYAP’s planet again and again. You might, in fact, not want to leave.

Sum up what you do in a few simple sentences

“Go to the secret spaces where my songs are born and sing from there. Allow myself to be vulnerable, quiet and devastatingly imperfect.”

What’s a song I need to hear right now?
“Neon God.” Not exactly representative of the whole, but it will send shivers up and down your spine for three minutes straight. Black as coal, redolent of P.J. Harvey at her most menacing.

Where can I see her play?

At the Holy Oak with JindaLee and James Irwin on Saturday, Dec. 3. “Early show for chillin’,” apparently. 6:30 p.m. start. - Toronto Star