Yaeji - With A Hammer

In 2020, Yaeji’s mixtape ‘What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던’ took a bombastic yet stripped-back approach to alternative electronic music, furthering a characteristic contradiction within her sound. Complicating this contradiction – or rather, enhancing it – is follow-up ‘With A Hammer’, where sound slips far beyond the binary boundaries of maximalism or minimalism: it’s DIY pop at its most whimsical and untethered. Using rebellious reconstructions of genre – including avant-pop, trap, house, hip hop and electroclash, as well as wind and percussion instruments – Yaeji builds an inventive, abstract, platform-video-game-esque fantasia where pop music is indescribable yet familiar, considered yet unbound, material yet digital.