OYA PAYA Call The 'Operator' And Announce Long-coming Album

Winding through the highs of the hype machine and the lows of longing over international borders, loosely Liverpool-originated, intercontinental slacker-punk trio, Oya Paya are back and beating a winding, sweeping path to their debut album via latest single, the instantly gratifying, wiry melody bomb of Operator.

With the band's twelve-track debut long-player, Slumped Up, arriving via Tri-Tone Music before the year is out, the single ignites a short fuse leading to an explosion of yet more, fresh, dopamine-rushing garage pop.

A head-swivelling, eye-popping and sneaker-tapping triumph over adversity, the songs spread across Slumped Up keep up a rate of occasionally cartoonish, frequently poignant, E-numbered energy that denies the file-swapping origins of a sonically ‘live' album.

Stretched between South East Asia, Merseyside and the south of England, pushing against time zones as well as distance, the entire album, evoking the sound of their sweat pit live shows whilst being spliced together in home studios, was written and recorded remotely between the UK, Singapore and France.

Operator, the second cut to be released from the album after Oya Paya pushed out Slow Slug on the down low at the end of summer, presents a higher-octane, buzzsaw-indie side of a band that's equally adept at loungey, blissed-out funk, loose-stringed acoustica and occasional 8-Bit electronica.

Lead singer and guitarist, Maxime McGowan, bassist Saam Jafarzadeh and drummer Ashwin Menon maintain the insistent creative origins of the band in the present day, having hit low-ceilinged stages together in the middle of the last decade, moving quickly to release languid, debut single Just A Little Man in 2016.

Sweeping up critical attention through their 2019 Som EP and 2021's Connect EP, the prolific trio's sonic hot sauce, blending Beck-style slow-mo grunge and squelchy garage pop of Menomena, Pavement or The Flaming Lips is spread liberally over their first, long-in-the-making full-length album.

Alongside confirmed release details for Oya Paya's debut album, touring plans are set to be revealed before the end of 2023.

Previous Oya Paya releases have received widespread critical acclaim across tastemaker media, including with DIY Magazine, Pop Matters and Earmilk and have been heard on air on BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 6 and BBC Radio Merseyside.

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