MUSICA: Your music feels deeply connected to nature and the living world. Where do you most often find the first spark for a new composition
YBY: I find my first inspiration in nature, always outdoors. We live by the sea, and that environment is an almost inexhaustible source of sounds and inspiration for me. Sometimes I sit or lie against a tree and listen to the rustling leaves, the birds and the wind. At other times, I listen to the sea, which never sounds exactly the same twice.
To me, nature is a living composition. The wind, the trees, the birds and the sea all have their own voices, rhythms and secrets. When I become quiet enough to truly listen, it sometimes feels as though the music is already there in the landscape, and all I have to do is find it. There, among the trees, the wind and the sea, the first spark of a new composition is often born.
MUSICA: You work across ambient, cinematic, acoustic, world and experimental vocal music. Which part of your creative identity feels most alive to you right now?
YBY: The experimental side of music has always felt most alive within me. I don’t begin with a fixed genre or formula. Whatever I am feeling at a particular moment, I begin to write and sing. Sounds often emerge by themselves, almost instinctively, and gradually grow into a new composition. That is why no two songs of mine are ever the same.
I see every composition as a living work of art, built from sounds and tones, primal sounds, voices and different colours. Sometimes it is beautiful and still; sometimes strange or raw — just like life itself. I love using throat sounds, for example, but even those often emerge very naturally, without my planning them beforehand.
In a way, every composition is a page from the diary of my life. It tells something about who I am at that moment, what I am feeling and how I see the world. Perhaps that is the most alive part of my artistry: I never know exactly what will emerge until I allow it to emerge.
MUSICA: With new music and projects on the horizon, what should listeners be watching and listening for next from Yby Potlatch X?
YBY: What comes next is something people do not yet know and perhaps, at first, may not even recognise. Above all, it is about magic. The music people hear from me now still contains many recognisable elements. They can find something of themselves within it. But I am Yby — and I am Yby for a reason. I want to go much deeper.
First, I want to give people time to get to know me and my musical world. Then I want to slowly take them with me into a world that may still be unknown to them, but one in which I have lived all my life. Ever since I was a little girl, I have seen colours and heard all kinds of sounds. It has never seemed strange to me; I simply don’t know any other way.
In my imagination, I often live far ahead in time. Ideas that may seem futuristic or unusual to others can feel to me as though they have always existed. I am a creator, someone who is constantly trying to look beyond what is already known — towards what might exist next.
For me, 2026 is primarily the year in which I am gradually bringing many years of my music out into the world. Much of the music appearing this year was not composed in 2026. Some works were already completely finished; others I developed further in my studio because I felt they had not yet become everything I wanted them to be.
But in 2027, another chapter begins. That is when I want to take the listener into the future — into a musical world that goes much further than anything I have revealed so far.
I won’t say any more about that for now… otherwise I might give away the magic. 🙂
READ THE FULL FEATURE IN ISSUE 32
