LA-based conceptual pop band YACHT have dropped their new single “Eve Babitz“.
The song, inspired by Eve Babitz’s famous nude chess match against Marcel Duchamp, is out now. Grab it here.
The band has been sitting on “Eve Babitz” for a while. They had grand plans in 2022 to release the song with a custom-designed chess board. They also designed a whole bundle that would be sold in the gift shop, and they were invited to perform at the museum to launch the project. Then it all fell through, and they’ve been sitting on the song and special stuff ever since.
Speaking about it, they shared: “You might have seen the famous 1963 photo of the artist Marcel Duchamp playing chess in an art gallery against a nude woman. That woman was a young Eve Babitz, one of our all-time favorite writers. The way she tells the story, in her essay “I Was Naked Pawn for Art,” she lost to Duchamp repeatedly—falling for a fool’s mate, the fastest and most easily avoidable checkmate in chess. What a disappointment. We were rooting for Eve!
We started reading Eve Babitz’s work around the same time we got into chess, in the early weeks of lockdown, so this story felt like a perfect little parfait of our favorite things: chess, Los Angeles, parties, champagne, conceptual art, etc. Our only disappointment was Eve Babitz falling for a fool’s mate, the fastest and most easily avoidable checkmate in chess. We were rooting for her!
So we decided to go into the studio and make a little revisionist pop song about Eve Babitz absolutely demolishing Marcel Duchamp at his own game by pushing a pawn all the way to Queen status. Don’t underestimate a pawn!“
Have a listen now.
About YACHT
YACHT—Young Americans Challenging High Technology— is a post-pop music group battling entropy. Jona Bechtolt, Claire L. Evans, and Robert Kieswetter have been making music, performances, installations, and other shit for a long time and they hardly look a day over 37.
