Yöt is a four piece group from Helsinki, and Bitch Bender marks their third release. They’re calling it a mini-LP or mini-album, and I’m not clear as to why they’re avoiding the term EP, but that’s all just a matter of semantics. What matters most is that they released a collection of six songs of instrumental hip-hop, dub, and skweee.

Before I could really listen to their music, I had to deal with Yöt’s titles on this release. With the album titled Bitch Bender, and featuring song titles such as “Man’s World,”” “Pussy Ass Figures,”” and the title track, I’m left scratching my head about the politics of this group. With no vocals and no explanation provided to give insight into their intent, the kindest conclusion I can draw is that at best these four men are pretty insensitive. This is really unfortunate, since it’s doing a disservice to their music and is redirecting this review away from analyzing their compositions, which are enjoyable. When a four-piece instrumental group can sound like a one-man production team, you’ve clearly got good chemistry, and plenty of interesting ideas are laid out on the record, especially in their manipulation of hip hop beats, dub techniques, and layers and layers of keyboards. Everything is very melodic and they lay down some good grooves. They have a good understanding of song structure and layering of melodies as well. There aren’t any stand out moments, though, but by keeping the album short they never run out of interesting musical ideas.

I’d like to recommend Yöt, but without explanation of their weirdly offensive titles, I can’t bring myself to do it. An artist or group has to be absolutely amazing to warrant conflicted emotions when weighing their musical contributions versus what we know about their personal life and politics. When an up-and-coming group releases a good-but-not-great collection of six songs with odd titles that appear to only be there to raise eyebrows, I’m not conflicted at all. Instead of speaking of promise, I focus on the disappointment.