WHEREFORE ART THOU MANDY YAKEN?

This is a transmission from a parallel dimension.

Mandy Yaken is the newborn alter ego of Mehdi Cayenne.

I’ve come alive again with a new skin for the old ceremony: inside out, upside down.

Why? Just because.

This album feels like they’re songs only I could’ve written; songs with no shortcuts. What kind of music do you make when your whole life is just a patchwork of pieces that don’t fit? Survival songs. This music is what remains after the tsunami of life washes over you and what you thought you knew. Now up is down and left is right, what is left? A little dance. I got a new tongue and new teeth, and wrote and rewrote until every word, every sound had the proper bite.”

Wisdom Teeth was entirely written, composed, produced and co-mixed by me  - in my dingy rehearsal space in Montreal’s abandoned industrial neighbourhoods.

“The recording of this turmoil ressembles the alchemy of plastic transformed into gold. Which is another way of saying I like using pretty crappy gear and scraps of sound as my orchestra!

Nearly every instrument on the album was played by me; I then went around my different friends’ houses: most drums were recorded with Oli Bernatchez (Le Havre), as well as keyboards, drum machines and guitars on select tracks by Olivier Fairfield (Fet Nat, Timber Timbre, Last Ex) and some bass parts by Patrice Agbokou (Socalled, Jean Leloup).

Two tracks include back vocals from Meryem Saci and Gabrielle Shonk, and “The Worst” features the legendary Saul Williams.

I also feel the DIY spirit of Wisdom Teeth seeped into not only the recording process, but within the words themselves. Even though English was actually the first language in which I constructed full sentences as a toddler (I was all mixed up between French and Arabic too), there’s a weird and wonderful rebirth that occurs by rediscovering yourself in another language: strangely similar, yet utterly distinct.

Wisdom Teeth was then co-mixed and shaped by Mark Lawson (Arcade Fire, Basia Bulat, Beirut), and mastered by Harris Newman at Greymarket Mastering.

The half-scary, half-cute smiling figures on the cover are part of a series of artworks I created with markers, a typewriter and a home printer.

These Wi$dom T33th are irrepressible.