Premiere: Future Soul Band Yakul Get Surreal On A Late-Night Road Trip

Last year, Brighton-based four-piece Yakul released their debut album, Rise Indigo, a 14-track calling card to introduce the world to their stylish yet sincere blend of pop and R&B with a hint of hip-hop. Keen to keep the momentum rolling, they return with visuals to their new single “Take Flight”.

The influence of the R&B and neo-soul melodies of people like D’Angelo and the like can be heard fairly quickly, but there’s also an echo of the jazzy funk of Dilla in there too. But Dilla’s influence runs deeper than that, even guiding how the band makes their music. As frontman James Berkley explains, on this track at least, they looked towards a lot of Dilla’s techniques when they made this song.

“This is the first Yakul track I’ve fully produced,” Berkley says. “From the beginning, I’ve had such a clear idea of how I wanted it to sound. It was a great experience experimenting with it in the studio, running multiple tracks through our reel-to-reel tape machine and matching the energy of the song itself to the production.”

Filmed by Avocado Baby Media with help from Wild Stag Studios and animation from PIEWACK, the video seems like a relatively simple concept on the face of it. We start with a shot of Berkley and the boys squeezed into a car on a nighttime road trip through town before events take a turn for the surreal and it all gets a little overwhelming.