Yaeji’s journey from BK underground house phenom to cult pop icon is a fascinating one. Her breakout hits like “Raingurl,” “Guap” and “Drink I’m Sipping On” adhered to a simple, direct template. Pumping, dusky percussion and languid pads supported Yaeji’s mellow, half-mumbled raps. Owing no small debt to Galcher Lustwerk’s innovative reimagining of deep house, she nonetheless brought her own spin on an emerging, neo-retro trend. Her songs were catchy enough to transcend language barriers - the Korean chorus of “Drink I’m Sippin’ On” is one of Yaeji’s biggest singalongs - and microscenes. She united early-20’s club kids, established rave heads and fans of dance-adjacent pop with ease. In 2017, everyone loved Yaeji.
With nerdy glasses and a baby-ish singing voice, she’s an unexpected breakout. But the disarming presentation helped to frame music that, over time, revealed surprising depths and multifaceted dimensionality. If partying and hedonism were early lyrical obsessions, they were rendered in soft focus and with a tenderness that cut against the grain of the previous decade’s grandiose “last night on earth” pop anthems (think of Pitbull or The Black Eyed Peas’ paeans to cathartic obliteration). In 2018, she released “One More,” a bilingual banger that drew heavily on her established playbook but hinted at a new direction. Describing the song, she writes that it’s “a track I started while experiencing deep growing pains. I felt lost in my life's quick change of pace, and betrayed by someone I trusted. I needed to write this song to understand what was happening around me.”
That approach of using music as a tool for self-knowledge and insight - as a way to plumb one’s own depths - would emerge front and center on her debut LP With A Hammer. Released in 2022, the five years between it and her debut is impossible to miss. Yaeji channels Aaliyah and Timbaland’s r&b innovations, rugged drum ‘n’ bass and delicate ASMR vocal delivery, sometimes all in a single track. No longer the newcomer, Yaeji strides confidently into the role of the mature artist.
While the sonic growth is of course worth remarking upon, the personal, psychological deep dive she embarked on during its writing is just as impressive. “With A Hammer” is accompanied by an 111-page book of art, journal entries and photographs to give context to the songs. Buried emotions and forgotten years were suddenly reemerging with startling urgency. “I had lived 20-whatever years thinking, I’m not going to cause any problems, and if something crazy happens I’m going to push it down,” she told Pitchfork. “And now there’s this new, spunky kid who has just awakened and is trying to scream.” The fruits of that upped confidence are in full evidence on her just-last-week released, self-referential banger “booboo,” sure to be a high point of her Outline set.
That level of rawness is matched by Sofia Kourtesis, who performs live just before Yaeji. Kourtesis’ approach to house music feels less tied to DJ culture than to ancestral lineages, magical realism and a boundless, cinematic scope of imagination. Last year’s epochal Madres throbs to the beat of a 4x4 kick drum, but atop that simple framework Kourtesis crafts songs that touch the heart. On the title track, a hypnotic refrain speaks to timeless yearnings. “Ven, niño que estas ahí, vuelve a casa, vuelve a casa / Si tú me amas / Vuelve a casa, vuelve a casa” translates simply to “Come, child over there, come back home. If you love me, come home.” Kourtesis infuses the music with extended vocal lines, tender harmonies and twinkling, bubbling synths. The effect walks right up to the edge of cheesiness, but in that way that a heartfelt confession or a final expression of love breaks free from the prison of good taste to offer up something authentic and pure. Kourtesis brings you into a heart space, and only the most committedly cynical listeners will refuse to be moved. It’s their loss. As she said in an interview, “I was living through processes of pain, grief, and all these things. In the album, it was crucial for me that it’s not the machines talking. In the past, I made music that has good vibes, that you can listen to in a club, or can dance to at a festival. This time I wanted to open up and I think there is nothing more beautiful than your own words and your own voice for that. I was like: Less machines, more me … to share my own story.”
The rest of the lineup moves through similar spaces of naked vulnerability and unfiltered humanity. Ela Minus bridges electronic producer mentality with songcraft that moves from gentle to confrontational. Nourished by Time scratches the Arthur Russell itch like few can, while still sounding not quite like anyone else. Echoes of lost boogie rarities sit comfortably alongside soulful 90s r&b and lo-fi pop. Finally, Malibu represents the world of proper ethereal, ambient composition. Her 2022 album Palaces of Pity is a truly awe-inspiring sonic journey, evoking cascading cloud banks breaking over mountain peaks.
The night starts at sunset and wraps up late, a true journey and a rave for people who want something different on their dancefloor. As Yaeji observed in another interview, “There’s a lot of dancing around emotions, reading in between the lines and thinking more as a group rather than an individual, which innately involves suppressing some of your personal desires, reflections and emotions.” Not this time - Outline takes you to the heart of the matter.