Artists like Dallas’s MC 900 Ft. Jesus (all the rage in the early nineties) and current acts like Austin’s D:Fuse have always dotted the state, yet Texas has barely had a foot in the door of the electronic music scene. While superbly envisioned and created, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL AT ALL TIMES (Ninja Tune), the debut from Houston’s YPPAH (a.k.a. Joe Corrales), is unlikely to change this. It’s not his fault—there’s a geographic anonymity to electronica, and while Yppah (pronounced “Yippah”) incorporates hip-hop influences, his entrancing work sounds no more like Houston than, say, Prefuse 73’s sounds like Georgia. Yppah spent his early years as a bassist and guitarist before entering the deejay world (where he mashed up such artists as OutKast and Ted Nugent); now he’s broadening his scope. Blending a multitude of organic sounds (samples, fat bass, guitar arrangements) over low-fi and minimal beats, he keeps the twitches and blips that derail so much of this music to a minimum. Instead, the album flows from one gorgeous, layered orchestration to another. The lack of lyrics inevitably lends a sameness to the tracks, but Yppah’s subtleties continually draw you back in.
