YACHT

YACHT is an electronic music group based in Portland, Oregon, centred on Jonathan Warren Bechtolt, who also uses the name Jona Bechtolt. Bechtolt is born in Astoria, Oregon, and begins playing music as a teenager, leaving high school to play drums in his brother’s touring punk band. He starts working with electronics in the late 1990s and begins issuing solo records under the YACHT name in 2003. Most of these recordings are distributed by Marriage Records and States Rights Records.

Since 2009, the group includes Claire Evans, a musician, writer and media artist whose vocals appear on earlier YACHT recordings such as I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real. Evans grows up in the underground noise scene in Los Angeles, is part of Portland group The World Court, and also presents PowerPoint performances at MoMA PS1, The Kitchen and the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. She and Bechtolt work together on many projects after meeting in 2004.

YACHT’s work develops from Bechtolt’s solo recordings into a fuller group project. In 2003, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art commissions him to create a full-length audio-visual electronic pop opera. He also performs with The Badger King alongside Marianna Ritchie, who has played in Wolf Colonel and Dear Nora and later records as Manta and then Mantar. In 2006, he works with Khaela Maricich as part of The Blow, contributing to Paper Television, and tours with that group playing beats and backing vocals until leaving in 2007 to focus on YACHT. In the same period he is commissioned for performances by Rhizome for its Crap-tops vs Laptops show, performs at MoMA’s P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, and makes an hour-long internet radio programme with Clear Cut Press.

The 2007 release party for I Believe In You. Your Magic Is Real includes a concert performed on an actual yacht on the Willamette River in Portland. See Mystery Lights, released in 2009, is the first YACHT record to feature Evans as a group member. From 2010, YACHT expands to include The Straight Gaze as a backing band, with Bobby Birdman on bass and backing vocals and Jeffrey Jerusalem on drums; in this line-up, Bechtolt and Evans both play instruments. YACHT live performances combine music, dancing and elaborate PowerPoint presentations.

Bechtolt is also a co-founder of the Portland blogging community Urban Honking and works as producer, editor, cameraman and writer of The Ultimate Blogger. He documents much of his professional and personal life through video, text and images on his blog. Bechtolt and Evans are both vegans.