Astronaut feat. Scroobius Pip

YILA met Scroobius Pip through his old school friend Dan le Sac in early 2006 while he was touring his debut EP. Dan booked them both to play at one of his club nights at Reading’s Fez Club – they dug each other’s stuff and quickly resolved to create a track together. Soon after Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip hit gold with the anthemic ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ – a tune that took them into the pop charts, saw them performing to thousands of people at the summer festivals and whose video has had over a million views so far on YouTube. Scroobius, understandably, became a little busy while YILA, holding Scroobius to his word, retreated to the studio to work on this masterpiece.

Inspired by the “When I grow up I want to be an Astronaut” hook, the concept for the track took shape – as YILA states “growing up and being regarded a failure if you’re not at the pinnacle of professions”. He sent his handy work to Scroobius who coincidently had already started to write something with a similar concept. Whilst discussing the track, YILA mentioned the young character Dwayne from the film Little Miss Sunshine who was keeping a vow of silence until he could become a jet pilot… when Dwayne discovers that he’s colour blind he screams at the top of his lungs. It helped form the concept of the track, but totally ruined the film for Scroobius who had only watched the first half of it the previous night!