Ever wished you could relax and unwind with your fellow yoga buddies to the heavier sounds of Slayer and Metallica without scaring them all away? Have you been living in hope for atmospheric soft-edged tributes to hard-edged bands like Slipknot and Iron Maiden?
An emphatic ‘no’ and ‘definitely not’? Well, even if you were lying to save face or not, there’s obviously a huge niche market begging for the seemingly alien spheres of heavy metal and spiritually-driven exercise to overlap.
Enter Yoga Pop Ups, a long-running series of instrumental tribute albums that transforms “your favourite artists’ music [into] instrumentals in a fashion that enhances the yoga experience;” arriving to our attention via the folks at Noisey.
The formula is blindingly simple, transforming the speaker-bursting assaults of brutal riffs into calm, ambient arrangements that primarily use soft-focus synths, xylophones, harps, and light percussion while still retaining the familiar melodies of the original.
The lineup of bands that have had their sonic chakras realigned by Yoga Pop Ups would be enough to have any Soundwave festival-goer drooling and busting out their downward facing dog and mastering cat-cow stretch maneuevers in no time. There’s the aforementioned Slayer, Iron Maiden, Slipknot, and Metallica, as well as KoRn, Nine Inch Nails, Disturbed, Pantera, Dream Theater, System Of A Down, and our personal favourite, Tool.
Tool – ‘Vicarious’
Metallica – ‘One’
Slipknot – ‘Wait And Bleed’
But hard rock isn’t the only genre that’s been given the ‘Yogafication’ treatment, having produced a staggering amount of ‘tributes’ (over 160 since 2009) there’s hardly any popular artist of the modern era you could name that hasn’t been given the Yoga Pop Ups Treatment.
Care to sprawl on your yoga mat to some alt-rock? There’s Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Muse, and Foo Fighters (two volumes in fact). Are the classics more fitting for your half-frog and crane poses? Then try The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, or Fleetwood Mac. There’s plenty for pop and EDM fans too, from Avicii to Lady Gaga and beyond.
Even the speedy tempos of skate punk stalwarts Green Day and Blink-182 have been tempered for the benefit of supple bending and strengthening. Plus Aussies also get their own soothing accompaniment with AC/DC and Nick Cave tributes thrown in the mix.
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Arcade Fire, Coldplay, Guns N Roses, Oasis, Beck, Prince, U2, R.E.M., even Nickleback *shudder* – the list goes on and on and on.
It’s certainly a novelty, but Yoga Pop Ups can’t have sustained such a prolific half-decade career without their being some serious demand for these re-tooled discographies. We guess it’s like the pornography conundrum – everybody enjoys it but no one admits to it.
Once you’ve finished scratching your noggin over that, unwind with a selection of Yoga Pop Ups greatest hits below. Or check out Spotify and iTunes for more. A whole lot more.
Nirvana – ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’
AC/DC – ‘Thunderstruck’
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’
The White Stripes – ‘Seven Nation Army’
Prince – ‘Raspberry Beret’
Britney Spears – ‘Oops… I Did It Again’
Disney’s Frozen – ‘Let It Go’
