Captivating London-based duo Yawning Portal released their debut album Anywhere last week, just in time for consideration on your year-end list of favorites. Out on YEAR0001, it comes in at a little over an hour of pure bliss, chock-full of texture, imagination, and EDM-indebted production flourishes. The group’s pop sensibilities breathe life into ambient swirls and found noises; the end result can sound like a driver fighting to stay awake on the endless open road. We shot them some questions about this project, which was made over a three-year stretch. To steal their own words: "You never want it to end.” Read the duo of Jess Mai Walker and Joseph Ware's answers, and listen to Anywhere, below.

How did you land on Anywhere as the album title?

JMW: The music we make often has this ungrounded feeling, or a reaching for something ungraspable. In 2019, I had just moved countries, then Covid hit and I ended up living in this weird dislocated isolation bubble, as my grad school was closed, and I was living in a new city where I hadn’t had the chance to meet people yet, so I was doing a lot of thinking about the album before we had really started working on it, driving around kind of aimlessly just for something to do. 

I was listening to a lot of music in the car, and thinking about the car as this really magical, almost sacred space for connecting with music. I always go back to that feeling of being a kid sitting in the back seat with the radio on, looking out at the rain running down the window and imagining yourself as the protagonist of a music video … The act of listening is such a mobile, usually solitary experience now; whereas up until really recently, engaging with music was almost always something you did in the public sphere. I’m really interested in thinking about writing music that feels introspective but is exploring the universal; sacred music and genres like EDM propose this ineffable-emotionally-maximalist space that anyone can enter into … I think that’s the space we are trying to articulate with this project.

Where was the album made? Was it “In Iowa,” like the song suggests?

JMW: “In Iowa” I began on a residency in Des Moines; we also wrote a big chunk at our friend Pietro’s house in the mountains in Sicily. We made the album over the course of three years and between two continents, so it was mostly a case of snatching time whenever and wherever.

You’ve sampled some incredible pop acts, from Britney Spears to Carly Rae Jepsen to t.A.T.u. When did you first fall in love with the genre? What do you love about it?

JW: We’ve always loved pop but really didn’t feel as if it was something we’d be making. Growing up, it felt as if there was a huge gulf between pop music and “other” genres but the 10s really seemed to break down those barriers to the point where it felt like anyone could have their own weird take on pop. Thinking about the era when PC Music first took off and people genuinely couldn’t tell if it was satire or supposed to be ironic or something, but when we look back at that time now, I don’t think it’s seen as anything but earnest. A record that changed our entire approach to thinking about pop was E+E Recortes, it felt like it was taking the pop sound to its ultimate conclusion, and the SoundCloud culture of pop edits and mashups that followed was so informative to our sound in the early days of us making music together and what eventually became Heart & Earth.

Which visual piece of this rollout are you most proud of?

JMW: We made the video for “In Iowa” / “My City” on this cursed road trip where everything went wrong to the point that it just got totally ridiculous … So I guess, proud we managed to finish the video in the end and so grateful to Vasso and Donny for their patience.

Your NTS show is incredible. Where do you find new music?

JMW: There’s a few users on Soulseek who I end up downloading from a lot, so sometimes I just dip into their libraries at random to discover new artists and then research from there. Listening to a lot of mixes and anime soundtracks and the big CD collection at my job! And actually some of my favourite records this year I have found via Nina.

What’s your favorite texture?

JMW: Carbonation and bare feet in mud.

Is your name a D&D reference?

JW: Ha ha, yes it is.

You’ve described your sound as “music to levitate to,” “an opening to other worlds,” “a transmutation,” and “a prayer.”  Is there anything else you want your listeners to experience?

JW: I want the way people experience our music to feel as open-ended as possible; we have our own interpretations of what the sense of journey means to us on Anywhere, but ultimately want that to be experienced in highly personal ways for the listener. Even our own interpretations can feel malleable as we grow and change during our writing process and I’d like to feel as if a listener could experience that in the same way. 

There’s a unique feeling we’ve been trying our best to convey over the process of writing this album which i can best describe as this—it’s a summer evening, you’ve been on a trip with your closest friends and you’re driving back to the city … The sun is setting and there’s a cinematic feeling as the world passes you by. You put on an album for the drive and everyone is too tired to talk so you enjoy the final hours of each other’s company just listening and looking out of the windows, embodying the music in a way that makes you feel as if it was made for this exact moment and you never want it to end.