Yves Tumor

Yves Tumor is the recording name of Sean Bowie, born in Miami and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, where they started making music at sixteen as an escape from what they called dull, conservative surroundings. Self-taught on drums, bass, guitar and keyboards, Bowie left Tennessee at twenty for San Diego and later Los Angeles, and toured Europe and Asia for two and a half years after meeting Mykki Blanco in 2012.

Early releases, first as T.E.A.M.S. and then under the Yves Tumor name from 2015, leaned toward abstract, sample-built electronic music and ambient collage. The 2016 album Serpent Music, made after a move to Leipzig and recorded across Miami, Berlin and Los Angeles, drew comparisons to James Ferraro and Dean Blunt for its unsettling loops and field recordings, and came out on PAN before a move to Warp the following year.

From the late 2010s the project turned toward song form, building glam rock, psychedelia and soul into tracks that keep the noise and distortion of the earlier work. Safe in the Hands of Love, released without warning in 2018, and Heaven to a Tortured Mind in 2020, which the Guardian named its album of the week, established that approach, followed by a further album in 2023.

Live, Yves Tumor performs with a full band, fronting it in a way that draws openly on rock theatre while keeping the edges rough.