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Ya Tosiba is collaboration between Finnish producer Tatu Metsätähti and Azerbaijani composer and vocalist Zuzu Zakaria. It absorbs expansive electronics, live instrumentation and folkloric poetry of Caucasus into a spirited sound. Across their sound, musical and lyrical collaboration takes the listener on a global trek. Majority of tracks draw on the meykhana genre, a style of Azerbaijani improvisational wedding music, with “poetry battles”. As Zuzu sings in Azerbaijani, the storytelling comes alive. All of the lyrics are taken directly from poetry and texts: with tales of romance and war, sex and gender, nature and machine, politics and society. Though the stories are varied, and some are historical, they all tap into that tension; it’s the weight of history versus the promise of tomorrow. In chopping up recordings of the live players into their electronic beats, Ya Tosiba creates an effect of tradition and modernity “being samples from the same record, taking it apart and looping it to sound like one machine.” The grooves are funky and downbeat, drawing on Tatu’s beatmaking; guitar riffs soar high, with the bumping synth pads and Zuzu’s haunting vocals. The patchwork nature of their process, alongside the ambitious and danceable sonics, invites the listener into Ya Tosiba’s unique perspective, rejecting the notion that her Central Asian inspirations are an appendage to Tatu's Scandinavian roots and their shared experiences of European electronic music.