CAPYAC FIND BEAUTY IN LIFE-ALTERING CONTRADICTIONS WITH NEW ALBUM ‘SOBBING ECSTASY’

Today, Berlin & LA-based queer electro-funk trio CAPYAC are proud to share their new full-length album, Sobbing Ecstasy, via Nettwerk. The release marks the band’s first album as a trio after adding Obie Puckett as a full-time member, and Puckett’s unique playfulness and knack for melody mesh perfectly with founding members Delwin Campbell and Eric Peana, who founded CAPYAC in Austin, Texas, as a musical outlet for their oddball expressionism.

Sometimes a title is so good that it changes everything. Peana and Campbell first heard the phrase “sobbing ecstasy” while living in LA, when their roommate read aloud the emphatic liner notes for ABBA’s Gold LP on Apple Music. Something about those two words immediately clicked for the trio, and they began batting them back and forth, tagging songs that elicited a similar response. A playlist was created, and a stylistic framework began to materialize. Giorgio Moroder, Talking Heads, Bronski Beat, Yazoo—the kind of soul-stimulating, hook-laden sound that crystallized in the early ’80s and shattered before the decade had expired. “What are the songs that absolutely overwhelm you with emotion on the dancefloor and you can’t stop moving?” asks Puckett. “That was what we used as our guiding force for this album.” The band’s eclectic tastes from techno, funk, bluegrass, and beyond informed both the sonic and aesthetic palates that would come to define “sobbing ecstasy” as both an album and a term. Once they had their title and theme, CAPYAC wrote the album relatively quickly, taking an extended summer in Berlin to brainstorm, jam, and refine any details.

Across Sobbing Ecstasy, CAPYAC fearlessly shows their zany selves to the world as they navigate a broad spectrum of emotions; whether they’re brimming with love and self-confidence, overtaken by existentialism and grief, or a mix of both. “I love it when people talk about the dancefloor as a space for resistance,” says Campbell, “and I think that goes hand-in-hand with emotional vulnerability as a form of resistance.”

“It’s a joyful album, ultimately,” concludes Peana. “Joy as resistance.”

Arguably the strongest selling point for CAPYAC is their improvisational, antic-heavy live performances, which have wowed audiences for over a decade. More recently, they’ve captured the attention of two improv electronic music savants: Reggie Watts and Marc Rebillet. CAPYAC and Reggie became fast friends after a chance encounter in LA and bonded further by partying together in Berlin’s club scene; in February, they released the collab EP Songs From Celestial City. Then, Marc tapped the band to open for the lion’s share of his fall tour, and their madcap performance art has become a regular fixture of Marc’s sets on this run. After their final show with Marc (November 15 in Tampa), they’ll return to Austin, where it all began, to play an extra-special album release show on November 22 at the Empire Garage. If the Austin American-Statesman’s review of the group’s ACL set as a “flesh-and-funk-powered party machine” is any indication, this show will be one for the books.