When I wrote “Watch this space” next to Ydegirl‘s name in a recent post, I had no idea where it would lead me. The Danish singer’s vocal on recent RIP Swirl singles made me suspect she had some interesting music in her catalogue, but I never expected Sound of a Bite. The EP by Ydegirl (aka Andrea Novel) and composer/producer/DJ Xenia Xamanek (X, natch) came on one night while I was working very late, and it stopped me in my tracks.
The origin story of X & Yde‘s Sound of a Bite is almost too good to be true: the Copenhagen duo recorded it in a single day back in 2019, only to rediscover it on a lost hard drive in 2024. It was released in February of this year on London’s Odyxxey label, and I’ve never quite heard anything like it.
From the first seconds of “Took Work from my Tongue and Gave it to my Heart”, it’s clear this record will challenge you. The songs are sparse but layered, a minimal yet complicated fever dream, pulling from Reggaeton rhythms, Nordic baroque, new age flute music, and experimental drone, with a jazzy, dissonant edge that feels both timeless and fresh, never pretentious.
In an interview, they described the themes to Nina Protocol this way:
The lyrics explore juxtaposition, oral tradition, ad-lipping, lip-syncing, kissing, rhyming, speaking in tongue, and speaking up. Also, quoting some 400-year-old lesbian poems.
X & Yde channel that historical queerness into a modern, performative lens, blending the personal with the ritualistic. “Took Work from my Tongue and gave it to my Heart” feels like a whispered ceremony, with sparse flutes and synths building a hypnotic tension that cracks open into something unexpectedly tender.
The title track, “Sound of a Bite,” features guitar work from ML Buch and Lola Hammerich, grounding it in Copenhagen’s indie scene while pushing into wild new territory. You can hear Novel’s Ydegirl roots here—her solo work, like 2019’s notes19, also mixes baroque elements with haunting vocals, but this collaboration dials up the playfulness.
“Dares Soar” is a standout, its swirling rhythms and fragmented vocals are full of tension, equal parts eerie and mesmerizing, like a walk in a misty Nordic forest:
I’ve listened to these five songs countless times in the past few days trying to parse the individual elements, scribbling notes and skipping forward and back over short sequences trying to dissect it. I’ve dived into the catalogues of both Ydegirl and X, picking up bits and pieces that each of them might have brought to the project. None of that matters though: Sound of a Bite is a singular record, a collision of happy accidents that was almost lost, now rediscovered to bafflem haunt and mesmerize us.
