THE CRYPTIDS • “Humbolt”
Industrial Folk Art // Percussion & Singing // Salvage & Play
During their residency at el ROOM cdmx, The Cryptids (Bry Webb + Steph Yates) built “Humbolt,” the temporary sculpture that served as their percussion kit for a single musical performance. Their process involved exploring thrift markets, hardware stores, and utilities districts to gather materials, which included metal “found objects”—a copper gold-panning pot, display floats from a plumbing store, a brass shell theatre sconce—a jumbo Bonafonte plastic water jug, about 4 meters of beige plastic piping, and a large pylon (borrowed from the construction site outside) that was lit from within so that it glowed. "Humbolt" existed to the public for 3 hours, after which it was partly disassembled and the pylon, with its several structural and aesthetic enhancements, was returned to its construction site.
Questions the artists considered throughout the process:
How can we get to know a place that is not our home?
How can we engage the material specificity of the place as artists without being disrespectfully extractive?
What ways can we listen to a place?
The Cryptids is the two-headed collaborative project of Canadian musicians Bry Webb and Steph Yates. Webb, well-known as front person to storied rock and roll band The Constantines, has released four solo albums to date with Idée Fixe Records, including 2023’s stunner Run With Me. Yates, formerly a driving force behind sparkle-punk duo Cupcake Ductape and spook-pop band Esther Grey, has in recent years been performing delicate compositions as Cots, with two releases out on Boiled Records and Arts & Crafts México.
As individual performers, Yates and Webb have established distinctive compositional identities. And while their individual projects are often uniquely melodic solo-voice-and-guitar, The Cryptids is decidedly rhythm-focused, featuring Yates and Webb each playing drums and percussion, with minimal melodic elements beyond their patterned and harmonizing voices. Their sound involves both improvised and composed rhythmic play, distortion, minimalism, polyrhythmic percussion and vocal work, drone, punk, post-punk, experimental and found sound elements.