There are a number of things that Brian Esser and Jason Temple, the experimental duo that is Yip Yip, are apt to argue about: the origin of their band name, whether they're interested in incorporating vocals into their music and how many tracks will be on their next album. These are seemingly trivial details, but attention to such concerns has, seven years into their career, helped Yip Yip establish itself as an artistic, albeit slightly odd, progressive electronic outfit. With the recent release of their fourth album, Two Kings Of The Same Kingdom (S.A.F), and work on its follow-up already underway, it's clear that, despite a propensity for bickering, the two have a solid artistic vision.

CMJ: Beyond the use of a real saxophone in place of digital horns, how is your latest album different from your previous recordings?
Esser: The album before that, In The Reptile House, was just synthesizer and a lot of sampling, which we were more into then. This album is a lot more into going with the actual gear we have and moving into using the sax and cymbals mixed with the other electronic stuff. We are tying to make it more like a band even though we'll never quite be like a band.

CMJ: Once you conceived of Yip-Yip, did costumes just seem like an obvious must-have or did that idea develop later down the line?
Temple: The costumes probably came before the band or the name.
Esser: It's mostly an early Devo influence, honestly. We wanted to do a band that was music, but was also about art and costumes and stuff. The first costumes we wore kind of show how spur-of-the-moment a lot of this stuff was in the beginning. It was literally just us in our work outfits—long sleeve white shirts, black pants, black skinny ties—and these boxes that we made that were just white boxes with black faces. They weren't very interesting but it was just us trying to do this weird, identical person thing, because we looked the same when we would wear them.

CMJ: Do you foresee any upcoming costume changes?
Esser: No, not yet. We just changed in June of last year. I don't know when we are going to change the checker thing. We like it, so if it ends up kind of being that way, I'm down with the checkers. It's our first good costume idea.

CMJ: When you guys are thinking about recording an album do you think of it as conceptual, or does it come together in pieces?
Esser: They seem to come together in pieces. Right now we are writing a new album, and we have a pretty good idea of what it might be called, and we have a pretty good idea of what every song name would be. So we are writing the album based on the potential name of the album and the song names and what that makes us think, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's conceptual.

CMJ: Any chance you'll share what that potential name is?
Esser: The potential name is Apes Ahoy. Jason gets these weird stickers at [his photo lab job] that are basically three to four letter words. I don't know if they are always as funny as what he brings home, but they always seem to be funny, especially if you put two of them together. So by doing that, we have come up with probably 15 song names already that give you this goofy idea in your head of what they might sound like, like "Apes Ahoy." So we are making songs [around] what does "Stick Spin" sound like, what does "Cake Wig" sound like? It's ridiculous sounding, but its working so far. It's kind of funny, because on the way home from our tour with the Locust we decided that we were going to try and do our first cover song, and that song was going to be "Very Ape" by Nirvana. If the album is going to be called Apes Ahoy, say that's the last track on the album, then we can have this real Yip Yip song be called "Apes Ahoy" and then this big pause and then have the secret song, the Nirvana cover, called "Very Ape" and it would be funny because it would be two ape things. And that's how it works with Yip Yip. Sometimes two dumb ideas will combine together and make an even dumber idea.

CMJ: How do you cover Nirvana electronically?
Esser: I thought that from listening to the song it would be a perfect song to cover because it didn't seem to have as much going on with the vocals, it was more the music, and the music seemed strangely our style, or the style we are getting into. It all seemed so perfect, but then when we got home and did the cover, and when we only did the music we realized it was mind numbingly boring. After we argued about whether or not we should have vocals, Jason realized he could just figure out the vocal melodies [on the synth]. He figured it out and then I was like, "Damn, awesome, the cover is good."

CMJ: And now the most important question: Why do you think that Ms. Pacman is so much more prevalent than regular Pacman, and why does anyone ever keep it on the slow setting?
Temple: I like Ms. Pacman probably more than Pacman. But I only like it on the fast setting. It bums me out so much, especially when it's 50 cents, and then you find out that it's on the slow setting, you can never outrun the ghost.
Esser: It's funny because Pacman is kind of like music for us it seems, where we do better with it faster and if it's slowed down, it will literally be worse even though it should be easier. People go crazy thinking that we're trying to make video game music and that's not the case. We really do love Pacman and we really love Pinball, but we're not too bad of video game dorks besides that. We're anti-Guitar Hero. I take any side that South Park takes, and they've been ripping on it pretty bad.

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