Yoni Wolf has spent the last two decades traversing an isolated sonic landscape where underground hip-hop, avant-pop, and psych-rock meet. Some of Yoni's most fascinating and acclaimed musical experiments have been released under the moniker WHY? and his latest entry is no exception. On AOKOHIO, Yoni condenses the essential elements of 'WHY?' into an incredibly powerful musical vision. Co-produced by Yoni and his brother Josiah, AOKOHIO features a rich palette of musical voices that appear and disappear in a kaleidoscope of constantly evolving sounds. "I wanted a wide variety of sounds. I didn't want this album to be in one sonic zone. I always felt like too many people were tearing me apart to be smooth like that," says Yoni. Although the album contains many notable contributors, from Lillie West of Lala Lala to Nick Sanborn and Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso, the listener's attention remains entirely focused on Yoni's voice and vision. AOKOHIO shows that Yoni is rethinking the fundamental aspects of his approach to creating and distributing his music. The album is presented in six movements composed of two to four songs each, some segments appearing as short fragments that dissolve in a few seconds. "When I started this project, I decided to try a new approach to music creation and the way I work," Yoni explains. "I didn't like the idea of going back and making another album of ten or twelve songs. It was painful. It was too much. So I wanted to reduce the process and make it manageable. I thought to myself: 'Why not make small movements of five or six minutes and finish each movement before moving on to the next?' That's how I started to approach it. The whole process took more than five years; I would start working on something and put it aside for a while. The first songs on this album started in 2013."
