Yawn Zen

PR spun a lot of wild tales around Ringgo Ancheta when he seemingly emerged out of nowhere to drop Yawn Zen for Stones Throw: Was his family in a cult? Did he grow up on a commune? Had he even heard contemporary pop music before his late teens? But the truth was both more quotidian and more inspiring: mndsgn is just a better-than-most bedroom beatmaker who broke out of stifling suburban ennui with a post-genre enthusiasm for new sounds. This record’s textural instrumentals, which crackle and stutter with the janky grace of early Flying Lotus and treat ’10s indie and ’60s psych as contemporaneous inspirations, hint at his later expansions into skygazing R&B/hip-hop hybrids.