It's been a busy 2011 for Brontez and The Younger Lovers. They released an awesome full length earlier in the year released on an Austrian label, that sadly we were never able to get enough of to list (but we're told we will be getting a cassette version soon). They made another awesome and endearing music video with aQ pal Gary Fembot, and Brontez's modern dance company performed at museums in the bay area and beyond. On the flipside, they also had a terrible incident happen to them in the summer when Brontez and bandmate Adele Castellon were gay bashed outside of an Oakland club, resulting in five broken bones in Castellon's face (who ironically is heterosexual).
But we're super glad they haven't let someone else's ignorance and stupidity bring them down as the band seems to be hitting a new stride as of late. These three new songs are some of their best yet. "Boy From Senegal" features some pretty infectious lalala's by Matthew Melton of The Bare Wires, who also recorded these jams. That track has been stuck in our head for weeks with its Oh Sees like mixture of intensity and poppiness. The other two tracks keep the energy high and the power-pop garage punk sound delivered with raw perfection.
The 7" comes with a digital download, and with some UN-intentional punk spirit the labels on each side are wrong so the A side is really the B side.
We're so happy this is now on vinyl as these are songs meant to be slapped on the turntable and blasted in bedrooms for full on pillow fight and punk rock sleep over action. An added bonus is that the vinyl also comes with a cd copy of the record. Now on to the music inside...
Full on DIY scrappy and delicious garage punk jams brewed up by the Bay Area's own Brontez, best known for being in Gravy Train and beloved by many for his amazing DJ nights (such great taste in music!) and his overall contagious inviting and exciting spirit and high energy. Ever since moving to the bay from Alabama several years ago he's injected such a great bolt of sexually charged queer spirit into what can often be such a straight and white dominated punk rock scene. In true punk fashion he taught himself how to play guitar and with Gravy Train on a bit of a hiatus had songs pouring out of him that begged for a home so The Younger Lovers was born.
His covers of The Rip-Off's and The Replacements show how he loves his rock n roll to be loud, fast, scrappy and full of relentless energy. We love how honest and direct his lyrics are, whether coming clean about his wandering heart in "Ballad For All My Bandmates And Lovers" or singing about how he can't resist a hottie in "Low Top Chucks & Skinny Jeans." You can tell that Brontez loves punk, garage and riot girl a as much as he does girl groups and sassy bubblegum pop. These are songs that are as rocking as they are endearing, making us want to jump and dance as much as they make us wanna lick an ice cream cone and have a pillow fight with a room filled with our punk rock crushes. So damn fun!
This awesome & underrated record by The Younger Lovers is now available on chrome colored cassette with four demos recorded by K.B. from the legendary '70s New York power pop band The Nasty Facts, and they kill! The cassette is limited to 250 copies, so act fast on this one. Here's what we said about this record when it first came out three years ago:
Full on DIY scrappy and delicious garage punk jams brewed up by the Bay Area's own Brontez, best known for being in Gravy Train and beloved by many for his amazing DJ nights (such great taste in music!) and his overall contagious inviting and exciting spirit and high energy. Ever since moving to the bay from Alabama several years ago he's injected such a great bolt of sexually charged queer spirit into what can often be such a straight and white dominated punk rock scene. In true punk fashion he taught himself how to play guitar and with Gravy Train on a bit of a hiatus had songs pouring out of him that begged for a home so The Younger Lovers was born.
His covers of The Rip-Off's and The Replacements show how he loves his rock n roll to be loud, fast, ramshackle and full of relentless energy. We love how honest and direct his lyrics are, whether coming clean about his wandering heart in "Ballad For All My Bandmates And Lovers" or singing about how he can't resist a hottie in "Low Top Chucks & Skinny Jeans." You can tell that Brontez loves punk, garage and riot girl as much as he does girl groups and sassy bubblegum pop. These are songs that are as rocking as they are endearing, making us want to jump and dance as much as they make us wanna lick an ice cream cone and have a pillow fight with a room filled with our punk rock crushes. So damn fun!
Full on d.i.y. scrappy and delicious garage punk jams brewed up by the Bay Area's own Brontez, best known for being in Gravy Train and beloved by many for his amazing DJ nights (such great taste in music!) and his overall contagious inviting and exciting spirit and high energy. Ever since moving to the bay from Alabama several years ago he's injected such a great bolt of sexually charged queer spirit into what can often be such a straight and white dominated punk rock scene. In true punk fashion he taught himself how to play guitar and with Gravy Train on a bit of a hiatus had songs pouring out of him that begged for a home so The Younger Lovers was born.
His covers of The Rip-Off's and The Replacements show how he loves his rock n roll to be loud, fast, scrappy and full of relentless energy. We love how honest and direct his lyrics are, whether coming clean about his wandering heart in "Ballad For All My Bandmates And Lovers" or singing about how he can't resist a hottie in "Low Top Chucks & Skinny Jeans." You can tell that Brontez loves punk, garage and riot girl a as much as he does girl groups and sassy bubblegum pop. These are songs that are as rocking as they are endearing, making us want to jump and dance as much as they make us wanna lick an ice cream cone and have a pillow fight with a room filled with our punk rock crushes. So damn fun!
Sometimes records get lumped in the "New Age" category because they just don't quite fit anywhere else, even if they have noting to do with meditation, relaxation or spiritual transcendence. Many times it's because the music inside is so out of step with what's happening at the current moment, not necessarily ahead of its time but rather a seemingly latent arrival to a currently unfashionable style that no one knows quite what to make of it. Medieval electronic folk music from the mid-eighties? Sounds awful on paper, but we'd most likely feel differently if it was say, from the early seventies and from Germany, right? Well then, thank goodness for the cyclical nature of musical taste to see this unusual record see the light of day again, sounding better than ever. And thanks to Yoga records who in a bold move over the years have bought up the rights to many private pressings of leftfield "new age folk" music (they brought us the Collie Ryan reissues a while back), foreseeing that these eccentric gems would soon have a new much more appreciative audience.
Matthew Young's Traveler's Advisory hails from 1986 and its opening track, "Objects In Mirror", of delayed hammer dulcimer, casio and drum machine with hazy lyrics taken from found phrases and instruction manuals may sound like a song you might hear from any one of the current crop of bedroom pop practitioners such as Ariel Pink or Washed Out. Except Young's mellow voice, inspired more by Michael Hurley (Young covers Hurley's "Werewolf") and Medieval folksong, than OMD and New Order, speaks to a much more world-weary experience than any sincere/ironic hybridizing of past and present styles. Recorded at home, Young only sings on a few cuts here, most of the tracks are long atmospheric instrumentals of delayed dulcimer and banjo, sounding closer to that Edward Larry Gordon (aka Laraaji) reissue we listed awhile back. Beautifully dreamy, hypnotic and strange, we think folks who dug the past few Drag City reissues from Gary Higgins to The George-Edwards Group, or other latent new-agers like J. D. Emmanuel and Iasos will really dig this. Recommended!
We just LOVE British experimental eccentric Richard Youngs around here, whether he's making droning noise or plaintive folk or whatever else he gets up to. His last record was even an AQ record of the week! But even we were skeptical about this limited 10". Basically, what you have here is a 1990 live recording of Youngs, in front of a small, but VERY enthusiastic audience, reading 171 used train tickets. That's it. Nothing else. No music. It's not 'processed' or anything. It's a little bit like stand up comedy, without most of the comedy. But it is kind of funny. And actually pretty fun to listen to. Youngs hams it up, poetry-slam style, putting lots of emotion into reading nothing but the names of the various train stops. People shout for their favorites. And he even does a sort of encore, supposedly as a request from an audience member. Not sure about the replayability factor of this one, but it's pretty cool. The vinyl is one sided, the other side is an etching of a train map! So you can follow him along on his travels. ----* ----* Compilations : ----*
In our book, any Richard Youngs you don't have is Richard Youngs you SHOULD have. But this one especially is a crucial Youngs document: it's a reissue of Youngs' first ever LP, originally released in a vinyl-only edition of 300 copies on his own No Fans record label. This is actually the second time this has been reissued on cd -- Table Of The Elements did it before, but let it go out of print. So Jagjaguwar gets kudos for bringing it back, as it's an important and amazing release in the body of work of someone we at AQ consider a bit of a genius. You NEED it. Especially if you've already fallen in love with Youngs unique brand of experimental, folkish improv music. Here it's almost a religious rite, a 3-part droning minimalist mantra that incorporates (in a gradually additive fashion) piano, voice, oboe and electric guitar. Its repetitive beauty put it in Alan Licht's "Minimalist Top Ten" article in Halana magazine some ways back... and it is a primal example of what we find always so compelling about Richard Youngs' records. Although it doesn't emulate the raga form, Advent does seem like it might be perhaps meant for a specific time of day, and has that special spiritual/contemplative quality -- though some listeners might not be able to meditate so well with Youngs' bagpipe-like oboe keening away! Slow, simple (and simply gorgeous), and most of all so very sincere-sounding, Advent was the wonderful beginning to what has been an uncommon career.
The UK's Richard Youngs is a treasure, and his new release is a stellar one. Psychedelic, haunting, gorgeous, unique. As with his recent albums like "May" and "Making Paper" Youngs draws on British folk traditions, but here also melds his voice and acoustic guitar with electronics, for less of a minimal approach. The balance is perfect, of warm human melody and calming, sheening electronic drones, densely interwoven, or ringing out alone in the open, songs being both epic and intimate. Think of his last album "May" (a sad-song acoustic guitar and voice affair) with space-rock sound effects, adding drama and proggy intrigue. What's great is that the sci-fi mad scientist laboratory type of sounds here (theremin, ring modulator) are recognizable, but used uniquely, not ending up sounding like what they usually connote (thanks to the acoustic element perhaps). Meanwhile, the colorful, cartoony cover art looks like it was done by someone from a local high school art class, perhaps inspired by a '70s era after-school TV animation or something. But that's part of Youngs' charm, his aesthetic is wholly his own, not conforming to any hip scene, unafraid and honest. Both solo and with collaborators (notable among them Simon Wickham-Smith, Kawabata Makoto, Matthew Bower), he's created a fantastic body of work, from quirky noise improv to metallic drone to psuedo-prog to minimalist folk, his creativity and talent deserving of greater recognition (when's he going to show up on the cover of The Wire?). We'd imagine that although a lot of AQ regulars probably know Youngs, many more don't, and as this latest Youngs is certainly one of his best (of many great albums), it gets a big recommendation to all! So good, so heavenly. Also, if you liked Glenn Donaldson's Birdtree cd as much as we did, you'll definitely want this too, for Youngs is an obvious comparison/influence...
It might be unfair (though easy) to lump Richard Youngs' recent output into the trendy category that lately has been swallowing all music that includes singing and acoustic instruments, namely "freak folk" (or "acid folk" or whatever you want to call it, you know what we mean). On Autumn Response Youngs is hardly singing the music of "the people", nor is he making conscious efforts to associate his music with that of past artists and traditions of his native British Isles. Instead, the lyrics suggest a solitary imagination, isolated and introspectively afoot in a landscape (the further journeys of a 'summer wanderer'?). His song structures are simple and atmospheric...mantra-like..built around emotive, hypnotic, doubled vocal tracks that become vertiginous at times with repeating riffs on acoustic guitar. The affecting, pastoral melodicism and minimalist structuring of these songs gives the impression that Youngs has combined the talents of the great Roy Harper with the methodologies of folk guitar experimentalist Steffen Basho-Junghans, perhaps.
Like most of Youngs' recent records on Jagjaguwar, this one is constructed with a limited set of 'rules' (instruments, production effects, etc.) which makes the record less a collection of songs and more a cohesive single work evolving through its various parts until arriving at the 16+ minute closer, "Something Like Air". It's something all right, and it's breathtaking, as is so much of this lovely, lovely album.
We never know what to expect from Richard Youngs, after years and years and tons of releases, a sound that runs the gamut from wild free form ur-drone skree, to tangled guitar / Casio crunch, to dreamy deconstructed shimmer, to hushed folky ambience, to electronics laced layered vocal soundscaping, even to Youngs just reading train tickets, not to mention about a million collaborations, many of them noisy and seriously out there, a proper pop record is maybe the last thing we might have expected. Which is good, cuz this is anything but a proper pop record. But it IS a pop record. And we're talking POP record. All of Youngs' music has had melodic and pop elements, but this is the first time he's totally gone for it, crafting a set of truly pop songs, albeit, filtered through his distinctly cracked sonic sensibility.
On a dare from a friend, Youngs created this pop song suite, which was then released as a super limited micro cd-r edition on said friend's label, but now, finally, Beyond The Valley Of The Ultrahits in unveiled to the public at large, which will no doubt appeal to a whole new audience, and will most likely also alienate older fans who might not be so open to such unabashed melodiousness, but we're loving it. Really when you get right down to it though, the hype around this record has been a bit overblown, it's not like Youngs hasn't spent a good deal of his career crafting proper songs, crooning and playing piano or acoustic guitar, playing some sort of folk or prog, but always it was a sound that seemed to constantly flirt with the boundaries of pop music, so to long time fans, this record might not seem all that far out, but at the same time, it's just so catchy, reminding us more of groups like the Moles or the Chills or even the Smiths, a sort of heartfelt twee pop, the vocals absolutely the focal point, the music muted and merely background for Youngs' crooning popsmithery. The rhythms skitter, while guitars and organs whir and swirl creating streaks of sound, a hushed minimal backdrop for this retro almost new wave sounding pop, sequenced synths, processed rhythms, but it's the melodies and the vocals that define the music, "Like A Sailor" totally sounds like something you might have heard on MTV in the eighties, a sound that would fit pretty comfortably alongside songs by Talk Talk, Ultravox, Echo And The Bunnymen and the like.
But it's Youngs, so it's not nearly that simple, a swirling pop song will be laced with some grinding buzzing crunch, but also some super catchy, almost cheesy lead guitar, then the whole song will be wrapped in a gauzy otherworldly haze, other songs get almost funky, the bass becoming more pronounced, reminding us a lot of The Style Council, all soulful and shimmery, but then the record will shift gears again, and Youngs will pair vocals with some electronic rhythms, multitracking his voice, strange harmonies and falsettos battling with the strange swooping rhythm underneath, and then it's right back into something more straight ahead and poppily new wave. Here and there, Youngs melds minimal folk to this new pop sound, or infuses some tracks with John Carpenter like synths, and that sort of eighties action movie credits vibe that's so popular with the hypnogogic pop crowd, but when wedded to crazy catchy off kilter pop, Youngs creates something entirely new, or perhaps not strictly 'new', but a sound that's original but with enough of a retro new wave vibe, that everyone into the cold wave / synth wave revival, who are up for a poppier take on that sound, might end up as obsessed with this record as we are.
Includes a download code.
Scotland's Richard Youngs, besides being quite prolific (we have, like, two other new RY records in stock as well!), is also a true original. From release to release, you can sometimes predict what they might sound like - and sometimes not, not quite. While, as on the recent Summer Through My Mind, he's often in 'avant-folk troubadour with acoustic guitar and wistful voice' mode, his music can also take other, more difficult, droned-out and experimental paths - as it does here on Calmont Breakdown, a buzz/blip filled disc of lo-fi shimmering soundscapes and haphazard electronic rhythms, however one that's still generally blissful and occasionally graced with Youngs' gentle voice.
The album begins with the softly cacophonous broken-down beats of "Distress", sounding a bit like multiple layers of Morse code tapped out on children's toy instruments, a chittering instrumental with one brief dubbed-out vocal interjection. The next track, "Car Park", adds wordless, moan-like singing while the melodic buzz and bleep backdrop becomes less dense - someone hearing this for the first time, unfamiliar with Youngs, could almost construe it as a parody of Thom Yorke, like an extreme brain-damaged abstraction of an Atoms For Peace track or something.
Then, there's the off-kilter piano plink, "air-puff" electronic noises and sparse drum machinery of track 3, "In Containers", followed by "Theme From Pleasure Lands", which kind of continues in that vein; and really, each of this album's five tracks manage to flow nicely together, creating their own confusional sonic world, from an alternate universe of music making, for those who groove on WTF? albums like Sun Araw's Inner Treaty or Blues Control's Valley Tangents.
For Clamont Breakdown's grand finale, the glitchily epic 19 minutes of "Deep Inspiration Of Nothingness", some extra distortion fuzz enters the woozily repetitive rhythmic mix, and a simple four-note motif cycles endlessly as all sorts of FX blink around the edges. It's maddeningly mesmeric, and like the whole album, beautiful and strange.
Heck, we pretty much like anything and everything Richard Youngs does, so of course this is recommended, but we get especially happy when he finds that experimentally weird-but-not-too-weird sweet spot, like here (we think).
Limited to 300 copies only!
We've always been huge fans of the prolific, idiosyncratic Scottish experimental folk troubadour Richard Youngs, and endeavor to review all of his many releases, though there's a few we've missed. Couldn't miss this though. First, due to the fact that it's on the reliable Root Strata label, and also, 'cause some have called this Richard Youngs' "metal" album. Hmm. We wouldn't go that far, no (though we of course would love to hear such an album from Mr. Youngs!).
But, the idiosyncratic Scottish experimental folk troubadour does allow his distinctive voice here to wander melodically, in his usual questing, fragile fashion, o'er a backing soundscape that DOES have its unexpectedly heavy elements... composed of churning industrial loops, distorted guitar chords (coming closest to an actual, plodding doom metal riff on "We Are The Messengers"), and dense, skittering, sped-up rhythmics that actually remind us a lot more of jungle, a la DJ Zinc, or Ed Rush or Dillinja or something, than metal, though we suppose there's folks who might think compressed "death metal drumming" when they hear it. Those parts sound something like Speedranch producing a Richard Youngs record, maybe. Yet, these seven songs, even with all their dark and difficult textures, still resemble true hymns and prayers, Richard Youngs blessing us always with his gorgeous, glowing vision.
While writing this review, we realized that we've never yet made a Richard Youngs album a Record Of The Week. How can that be??! Looking back, there's quite a few that shoulda been. And we were tempted to so designate this one, but worried that as it's a bit "edgier" than some of the Youngs albums (with placid piano, or acoustic strum, or even delicate electronic drone) that we've recommended in the past, it might not be the perfect one to pick... but then again, nothing wrong with edgy. Nor is this nearly as noisy as some of RY's more extreme early experiments, 'specially his collabs with Simon Wickham-Smith, either. We're just talking repetitive claustrophobic loops, clangorous but mesmeric factory ambience, and atonal electric guitar - the track "Forever Hills Of Everyday" in particular has got some out there guitar soloing that could be off a very warped late '70s/early '80s King Crimson effort... So while not "metal" this is at least "rock". Indeed, "The Healing Of Everyone", at the end of side two, is a throbbing fuzz epic over 11 minutes long, making for a grand finale indeed, a dose of psychedelic drone space rock hypnosis worthy of any of our faves in that realm. Moon Duo fans should dig it. So, yes, a good one. Highly recommended. And LIMITED TO JUST 500 COPIES, vinyl-only!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Richard Youngs has made some incredibly difficult music in his career of improv screech & splutter with Simon Wickham-Smith. But at the same time, he has produced a few records with some of the saddest songs to emerge from Scotland. Quite a feat, since both Mogwai and Arab Strap are fellow Scots. On "Making Paper," Youngs is in sadsong mode, sitting in front of a piano and slowly setting down delicate chords overwhich he sings extended floating notes with his crackling vibrato. These pieces could be based on archaic morality tales, but Youngs has forgotten most of the words and repeats a few syllables of the ghostly texts. Even with such a minimal arrangement, "Making Paper" achieves a quiet yet beautiful grandeur. Think of early Robert Wyatt or a melodic Gastr Del Sol.
Pathos makes for difficult subject matter, with the good intentions of an artist often getting derailed, ending up in a wasteland of Hallmark sentimentality. Yet, this eccentric Scotsman has been pushing further into the artistry of Pathos with record after
This review comes courtesy of AQ pal Loren Chasse (whom you know as a Blithe Son and Thujan), who wanted to make sure we told y'all just how amazing this record is. We would have done so, of course, but we knew Loren could maybe do it better. So here's Loren's lil' love-letter to Mr. Youngs, whom we've got a crush on too:
You may not have ever seen Richard Youngs' face on the cover of The Wire or read anything of great length on him in any of the magazines, but let this only be a testament to his persistence at being truly "experimental"Ì in his craft. In a climate of Experimental Music where most artists' so-called experiments take place on their first record and become schtick from there on out, the music of Richard Youngs remains truly exciting with each release because we never know what to expect. And it's not that we really get the feeling that Youngs is trying too hard to come up with something NEW each time, each record seeming more like an attempt at translating his musical voice in some fresh way and keeping things interesting for his own enjoyment. Lately, Youngs' records on Jagjaguar have been distinguished by his lovely voice (much in the British folk tradition) but with an ever-evolving and seemingly playful take on instrumentation. Mostly, what these latest records give us are challengingly beautiful songs, often built on simple and crushing melodic phrases, lyrics sparse and mysterious, and fleshed out with incessant and often hypnotic atmospheres. This latest record, like most, is one that requires a few listens to really get inside the songs, as they are spread out over long and spacious durations. Youngs' approach on River Through Howling Sky is a bit bluesy, using mostly electric and some acoustic guitar, several drum tones, electronic effects and a constant sounding of chimes and bells that imbues these four songs with a haunting continuity, giving the record the feel of a suite, beginning on jagged edges and, fifty minutes later, ending in a somnabulic daze. We are reminded in style and a bit in sound of Keiji Haino's own jagged take on the blues, implying the genre with a particular kind of soulfulness in which the guitar wastes no time on the standard 6/8 rhythm but rather plays the role of the Delta shaman out invoking apparitions in sweltering moonlight with purposeful and sensitive eruptions. Recommended!
Now on vinyl! Another Richard Youngs fave of ours... here's what we said about the cd when it came out the first time:
Exquisitely beautiful! Richard Youngs has left the angular noisy twang of his collaborations with Simon Wickham-Smith for this eulogy for a dog, Sapphie, who he grew to love. In spite of the pathos of this concept, this is a perfect piece of melancholia for classical guitar and Youngs' haunting voice, that fits in quite nicely with fellow Scottish mope rockers Arab Strap and Mogwai.
You can count on Scotland's Richard Youngs to make great records, whether he's in experimental mode, or folk troubadour mode, or both. Beyond that it's not always easy to know what to expect, though this new one seems comfortably familiar, falling into the melancholic folk zone, Summer Through My Mind being a lovely, lovely (and lonely) album of Youngs' voice and guitar strum. There's some harmonica and slide guitar twang giving this a down home, country-ish vibe, naturally channelling ancient Brit-folk balladry as well into its sad, sparse soundworld.
Youngs' singing is more about the emotive timbre of his wistful, high voice than rhyme or meter - he could probably sing the phone book, accompanied by his pensive, plaintive guitar, and it would sound hypnotic and heartfelt. However, his lyrics are in fact more interesting than that.
One track, "Story Of Jhon", is narrated in spoken form by special guest (and fellow lo-fi folkie) Simon Joyner, while Youngs sings the same words, echoing in overdubbed, overlapping fashion what Joyner just read. It's effective at somehow giving the story/song more weight and import, and a sense of timelessness. But, it's also a tad bit much after a while, the track being over ten minutes long, and so THAT particular piece might not bear repeat listens quite as much as the others on here, however. Many of which wherein Youngs also often doubles his own singing voice, and repeats phrases mantra-like, as on the even lengthier "Spin Me Endless In The Universe" - but there's, you know, nobody talking (sorry Simon). That one is lovely for the duration; and also, ferinstance, we could happily hear Youngs sing the record's title track over and over again, in blissful reverie, until summer does indeed roll around yet again!
Yes! First the new Ilk, then appearing on the cover of Wire magazine, then this! It's a blessed, bountiful season for Richard Youngs fans. (Funny, to think that he used to do a record label called No Fans).
The Naive Shaman (such a perfect title for a Youngs album... heck that's the darn review) is of Ilk's ilk for sure, and in line with many of the avant garde UK singer/songwriter's most moving and beautiful releases of experimental folk for the Jagjaguwar label in the past. Utilizing a backing of burbling electronics (including stabbing shards of feedback, but it's really very pleasant though) Youngs' voice is on display here, multiple vocal lines layered and interwoven. The droning, looping mellowness of the music provides this Youngs 'chorus' a lovely space in which to emote.
We talk a lot about music that puts us in a spell, or drones that elevate us to some hypnotic state of mind, but what's much even more rare, is to achieve one of those states, while also tapping into something more personal and immediate and intimate and haunting. Richard Youngs is a sonic shamen, conjuring up musical rituals that never fail to entrance and ensorcell us, we've raved about so many of his records in the past and his newest outing is definitely another winner, and is striking such a deep chord with us. His use of vocal repetition transforms these songs into otherworldly mantras, that we find ourselves NEEDING to listen to on a daily basis. With hazy instrumentation and hypnotic loops as the musical bed, Under Stellar Stream sounds like a magical collaboration between Robert Wyatt and William Basinski, as Youngs manages to merge a deep emotional impact with shimmery, softly nuanced dreaminess.
Listening to Under Stellar Stream evokes the sensation of watching an incredibly intense and beautiful film. Understated and emotional piano fluttering delicately, the sound restrained, yet expansive, the last two tracks if stripped of the vocals would sound right at home on an Andrew Chalk record. While Youngs definitely has a large devoted following we really think folks who might not have heard his records, but love the more haunting side of folks like Bonnie Prince Billy and Smog, might find much to love in the mysterious sound world of Richard Youngs. So fitting that the day we got this it was pouring outside as these are sounds so perfect for grey skies and rainfall, just standing beneath the bruised sky letting the raindrops fall where they may. Totally moving and gorgeous!
Elsewhere on this list you'll find Scottish experimental folk singer Richard Youngs' latest proper solo album reviewed, the fantastic River Through Howling Sky. Here, though, if that wasn't enough, is kind of a surprise bonus release from Mr. Youngs. He and his percussionist friend Alexander Neilson originally recorded this live set for broadcast on a British radio show. Fortunately for those of us who didn't (or couldn't) tune in -- or who did, for that matter -- VHF has now put this music out on cd! Which is where it belongs for posterity's sake.
Above, for convenience, we refered to Youngs as an "experimental folk singer" but that's a meager and misleading (not to mention vague) description of what he's all about. In the past, often in collaboration with Simon Wickham-Smith, he's proved himself capable of some uniquely bizarre and intense noisiness. Over the past decade, though, his output has gotten more and more "musical" though no less unique. Ourselves is perhaps one for those with fond memories of his noisier days, though. Electric guitar, bowed cymbals, bells, and more are used to create three long, dense, droning tracks of utter abstract psychedelic beauty. This disc is definitely likely to be liked by fans of VHF's Vibracathedral Orchestra! And those who adore Young's haunting singing, and his take on trad-folk stylings, will find the final hymn-like track "God Bless The Master" especially pleasing.
Because of their prolific nature it has become easy to take a new record from both Richard Youngs and Simon Wickham-Smith for granted, but the truth is they both have been putting out some mind blowing albums over the last several years and put to shame in quality & excellence many of their equally ambitious peers. Over the last 5 years Youngs and Wickham-Smith set out to meet once a year and record a ten minute track together. This recording is the culmination of those 5 years with each track named for the year it was created in. And wow how we love the results! This is the kind of record you want to make all aspiring experimental, knob twiddling, improv jamming, tape manipulating, concept having musicians to sit down, listen closely and take notes. Youngs & Wickham-Smith know so well how to reward patience by giving you these transcendent moments of total beauty. They get a trance going that becomes all encompassing and the next thing you know, you are totally wrapped up it its weird beautiful glory.
Since these two are known so well for their prolific nature it's nice to get to hear a project where patience and the passing of time come into play in such a nice way. Both Youngs and Wickham-Smith continue to flex their creative muscles, demonstrating an amazing ability to take experimental, manipulated sounds imbue them with a truly organic feel. Highly recommended!
The duo of Simon Wickham-Smith and Richard Youngs self-released this double album ten years ago to little acclaim until a Forced Exposure review enlightened the world (or well, at least the 300 people who bought out the only pressing). Reissued in cd format, this should enlighten the rest of us to the brilliance of these lauded British backcountry improv noisicians who have gone on to record amazing droneological experiments in recent years. Lake contains glockenspiel, handdrums, clocks, "scraper things", penny whistles, out of tune clock chimes, sampled collages, tons of fuzzed out guitar, and heaping doses of droning noises to please those who've learned to hear the lush textural beauty behind what others might call chaos.
Four lengthy tracks of ambient electronic shimmer. Gorgeous and dreamily exploratory. The first track features Youngs' tentative warble over a haunting theremin like drone, demarcated by a simple thudding rhythm and mellow chiming percussion. Like an Irish folk song performed acapella alongside a super subdued Wolf Eyes or an extra minimal Sunroof!. The rest of the record is mostly instrumental and filled with free form clouds of dreamy psychedelia woven from pealing feedback, ambient electronic chatter, complex shuffling rhythms, all keening and swirling lazily in the still air, very high up and very far out.
Jandek's rhythm section (when Jandek's in Scotland, anyway) can be heard on their own, again, with this fine follow up to their previous VHF release, 2004's Ourselves. Richard Youngs is the better known half of this duo, being a big fave here at AQ for both his gorgeous avant-folk recordings and his more (?) experimental, dronier works -- styles that tend to overlap often in his music, as they certainly do here on Partick Rain Dance. In the mix you'll hear, among other things, distorted Sun Ra-like synth, moaning vocals, free jazzy percussion, and what sounds like a belt sander. If we had to pick a favorite track, it would probably be the sixteen minute "Music Of The Last Sun" which features Youngs' usual beautiful vocals and guitar surrounded by wigged out electronics, hissing drones and free improv. But there's lots more to like on this cd for people who consider themselves fans of, say, both The Wicker Man and Wolf Eyes... For sheer abstract abrasiveness you've got "Big Aeroplanes" which layers feedback and what sounds like garbled shortwave static, while one of the prettier pieces on the disc would have to be "Noatak Beacon", a very ceremonial-sounding track for repeating voice and bells.
We've yet to review a record from Tirath Singh Nirmala (aka John Clyde-Evans) which is quite a feat considering the substantial body of work he's been amassing of late (mostly cd-r's) but it sort of makes sense that the first recording to be featured on our list would be the one that finds Nirmala teamed up with AQ fave Richard Youngs. The two are so suitably matched, it's tough to tell who's doing what, and ultimately, it matters not a whit, as for the duration of this disc, these two have become one, and seem to effortlessly conjure up a perfectly blissful and bucolic primal forest ambience. It's tough not to hear shades of Avarus, Anaksimandros, No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, but Nirmala and Youngs manage to explore similar territory in their own unique way. The sound is at once primal, tribal and primitive. Simple percussion, reedy drones drifting over murky landscapes, wheezing wind instruments, breathy reeds and fluttering flutes, clattery hypnotic rhythms, slippery analog synths and swooping spacey FX, processed vocals, dense ambience and melancholy melodies, all woven into a gloriously glistening, and subtly tripped out, prismatic tapestry of sound. Wonderful.
Packaged in a gorgeous full color sleeve, with a tiny mysterious screen printed insert. ----* ----* Compilations : ----*
The first thing you notice on Relayer is that oh so familiar Bower 'shimmer' from so many Skullflower/Total/Hototogisu/Sunroof! records. But this collaboration with Richard Youngs keeps things firmly in 'shimmer' without ever pulling out the stops and letting loose with a torrent of free-noise-jazz-skree as both are wont to do. Youngs contributes his usual melodic playfulness adding an almost festive/Christmas-y feel. The whole record in fact exudes that sort of vibe, shimmery dreamy ambience, with curious but appealing instrumentation like calypso casio beats, noodly keyboard melodies, steady ch-ch-ch rhythms, far away guitar freakouts, and all sorts of hum and buzz. Noise-y but joyous and warm. Almost new-agey but in a good way. A VERY GOOD way. Maybe think George Winston on peyote!! Or a Total record on Windham Hill. Sounds bad maybe, but coming from me (Andee) you know those comments are high praise indeed. Really really great!
RealAudio clip: "Eagle Like A Fly" [/audio/youngsbowereagle.rm]
RealAudio clip: "Iridescent Hosedown" [/audio/youngsbowerhosedown.rm] ----* ----* Incredible String Band Reissues : ----* England's Incredible String Band were a late sixties / early seventies outfit who blended folk rock, psychedelia, and Eastern ethnic musics.
Very sixties, very hippy -- they played at Woodstock, in fact. With their folky male and female vocals and expertise with a plethora of exotic stringed instruments, a shorthand description might be that ISB was kinda like Fairport Convention with sitars, and crazy costumes. But then, as they say, there's more: their music encompasses traditional British folk, Indian ragas, Dylan, blues, country, hoedowns, etc. -- an eclectic stew indeed. Sometimes ISB can come off as a little *too* varied: you might be digging some Eastern drone track and find an abrupt switch to, say, music-hall country a bit jarrring. But that just means there's plenty of different things on these discs to like.
We're always mentioning ISB in reviews of other folk-psych albums past and present, from Forest and Trees to P.G. Six and Tower Recordings, so it's nice to finally get these listed in our catalog...definitely if you're into that British folk-psych vibe you need to investigate this band if you haven't already!
Yoo hoo! Attention fans of the Magnetic Fields. Here's an album we think you just might like... especially if you particularly swoon to the Claudia-sung MF songs. Yours Truly aka Linda Smith and Paul Baroody make delicate synth-pop with simple, unobtrusive programmed drumbeats. And they're definitely not as big a bummer lyric-wise as Stephin Merritt and co. As a matter of fact, all you fans of the Aislers' Set, Book of Love (yes, there's a certain 80's spirit here), or any of Amelia Fletcher's projects (Marine Research, Heavenly, et al), tune in too!
"When in doubt - Front 242". Yup, that was the epithet Youth Code pasted at the bottom of their demo cassette which had been floating around over the past year. So, there's not much left to the imagination as to where this LA electronic duo situates themselves. Theirs is a sound which wholeheartedly reconstitutes the aggro-industrial and electronic body music of 1986 and 1987, when Ministry released Twitch, Nitzer Ebb produced Belief, Front 242 issued Official Version, and Skinny Puppy put out Cleanse, Fold, And Manipulate. Youth Code's electronics are those square waved sequencing, bass synth monochord stabbings, and LinnDrum emulation, with minimal amounts of melody cast through a jacked aggression and produced with a fright-show claustrophobia. The vocals from both Sara Taylor and Ryan George are virtually indistinguishable as throaty and blood curdling punk exhortations, hyper compressed and garbled with a tight distortion. As we mentioned in our review of Bad News, there are some aesthetics which we completely understand as needing to come back into the fold once again in the cyclical nature of musical trends; but this was one that we were pretty sure was gonna be just another glorious guilty pleasure. Nivek Ogre should be proud.
The band known as Youth Group makes for a surprising indie pop addition to the eclectic Anti Records stable of artists (who include Tom Waits, Neko Case, Daniel Lanois, Jolie Holland and The Coup). They bring with them no big bells or whistles, just willowy, touching melancholia. Although we do have mixed feelings about their cover of Alphaville's "Forever Young" (which has already surfaced on the TV show The O.C.), the rest of the album is oh-so-comforting goodness like a cup o' cocoa on a drizzly day. Nice!
All you need to know about Youth Group is they sound a lot like Death Cab For Cutie circa their utterly perfect debut Something About Airplanes. In fact they almost sound too much like Death Cab. But under the current circumstances, we are forced to totally embrace that, and this record, like we never want to let it go. For most of us Death Cab have been on a slow spiral downward, songs got less catchy and their sound less unique as they progressed from record to record. Transatlanticism was a brief return to form, but now they sound like just every other emo sad boy MTV band. And that's where Youth Group come in. Lilting, melancholy indie rock like we haven't heard for years. Every song is hooky and jangly and sad, and practically perfect. Shuffling simple drumming underpins strummed acoustic guitars, and reverby arpeggiated electric guitar melodies, and soaring, sorrowful vocals, sort of sad boy, a bit of indie whine, but clear and resonant and most importantly totally heartfelt and earnest. We can't imagine the sort of world where EVERY song on this record wouldn't at some point find it's way onto a mixtape. In fact this record sent us straight back to 1990 and had us wanting desperately to make mixtapes for every cute girl (or boy) we ever had a crush on or who ever broke our heart. It's exactly that sort of sound. We hear that long lost New Zealand pop sound that seems to have vanished completely (could that have anything to do with the fact that Youth Group are from Australia, just a hop skip and a jump from NZ?), early nineties college rock, that sort of Death Cab / Postal Service indie emo, a bit of Decemberists like quirkpop, some huge swelling emo pop anthems, some Pavementy angular jangle, but all wrapped up into perfect little nuggets of sweet and swoonsome indie pop. We wanted to hate this record, we truly did, we wanted to write Youth Group off as Death Cab wannabees, as some long past its shelf life indie college rock, but something made us keep listening, and now we just can stop. Some of the songs here have most definitely slipped right into our pantheon of best indie pop songs ever! Wow. Okay, then. We're gonna go make us a mix tape...
One of the more refreshing Ninja Tune outings in quite a while. Yppah is the work of Joe Corrales, a young man from Texas, who like many in his generation, has come of age at a time where shoegaze guitars and emotive laptops have found a special place in his heart. He's found a way to bring those influences together as he integrates his guitar playing through massive delays into the mix of the nice electronica he creates which most definitely recalls the honey soaked nostalgia of early Four Tet. Cinematic and wide eyed, it's also easy to start hearing how the latest M83 might have sounded without vocals or what Tristeza would sound like if they leaned away from post-rock and more towards electronica. Quite nice.
What do you get when you mix one part Swedish ultra dronelord Ondo, and one part French funereal doom sludge merchant The Austrasian Goat? Pretty much exactly what you might expect. And were probably hoping for. A sprawling expanse of abject sonic miserablism, huge heaving slabs of crumbling distortion and Teutonic rumble, thick swaths of buzz and rumble, tangled spidery minor key melodies, harsh hellish howls, extreme black ambience, or near glacial ultra doom, from the first track (of three) on, beginning with the above mentioned grim black crawl, the track seems to gradually ooze into something more drone than metal, the guitar chugs are blurred into long stretches of pitch black shimmer, eventually the track grows hushed, and ominous, a delicate drift of garbled voices and crystalline melody, all over a darkly swirling black sea of layered low end and slow shifting thrum. Eventually, things build back up with pounded reverbed piano, floating atop, ever escalating guitar drone incandescence, heavy and noisy, but weirdly pretty.
The second track, shortest of the three at a still impressive 16 minutes, starts off a billowing black cloud of sound, nightmarish ambience, laced with crackle and glitch, but mostly tranquil, if slightly malefic, the track explodes in a frenzy of almost black metal sounding fury, before slipping back into the blackened tranquility that preceded it, deep thick tones, slow motion melodies, echoing and filling the speakers with blackness, almost liturgical sounding, but some primitive black mass, some lost ritual, whispered voices lead the blackness, to a final climax of grinding crunch, lethargic riffage and chordal buzz, that gain manages to be lovely and heavy simultaneously.
Finally, the record closes with a soundtrack like sprawl of haunting otherworldly whisper and drift, tranquil, but foreboding, the piano returns, this time offering up haunting minimal melodies, while underneath, black winds whip and whirl, strings shimmer, all wrapped in a gauzey cloak of washed out buzz and distant low end rumble, like some strange hellish chamber music, or the soundtrack to some lost Italian horror film, gorgeously creepy and fiendishly evocative.
This one not so much for the doom metallers and sludgelords as much as for those who enjoy sounds both bleak and forlorn, miserable and depressingly beautiful, a creeping, soul stirring black ambient dronemusic, that is definitely heavy, but whose heaviness is tempered by the atmosphere, a soundworld grim and sinister, each of these sonic rituals a heavy black shroud for the dark of spirit.
Cool silver on black folded origami style sleeves, LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
We were pretty nuts for the first record from these UK indie rockers, whose self titled debut sounded like it was actually some long lost American indie rock record from the nineties, all indie jangle, and fuzzed out shoegaze shimmer, the vibe was Dinosaur Jr. big time, but also Mazzy Star and the Pixies and lots of other bands we dug from back in the day. We also compare some of the tracks to more contemporary garage poppers like Ty Segall and Thee Oh Sees, but on this new one, Yuck have definitely pushed their sound, which is clear from the first track, which stretches out a lovely clean guitar figure, all chiming and minor key, and then laces it with lilting melodies, woozy low slung bassline, some warbly organ, and maybe most surprising of all, some horns! Sound weird, but it definitely works. But fear not, by song number two, we're right back in 1995, jamming this Yuck cassette into the tape deck in our parents' car, as we head out to pick up our friends and do whatever we did when we were young. Glow & Behold totally has that kind of vibe, much of the crunch and fuzz of the first record has been dialed back a bit, so this new one is more mellow and melodic, for the most part, but then on tracks like "Middle Sea", Yuck kick out the jams, and once again have us imagining vintage Dinosaur or even the Swirlies, especially with the gorgeous boy/girl harmonies, and blasts of mathed out shoegaze buzz. The horns resurface here and there, and yeah, for the most part, this record is way more 'mature', barring a song/part here and there, but it still pushes lots of our classic indie rock buttons, and we find ourselves listening to this a lot, and digging it quite a bit!
Hard to believe these guys (and gals) are British, cuz the music they make is pretty much a dead ringer for nineties college/indie rock. Which is not a complaint at all, that's a sound we love and miss like crazy, and most of the bands who try it, can sometimes capture the sound, but rarely have the songs to go with it, but Yuck, who are indeed British, and also crazy young, have both, from the keening Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse) like vocals, to the super distorted leads a la Dinosaur Jr., to the lo-fi ramshackle sound and impossibly hooky melodies of old Pavement, all woven into something new and simultaneously not that new at all.
"Georgia" here is their big hit, and it's easy to see why, a sort of Swirlies style bit of shoegazey indie pop jangle drift, the guitars warm and fuzzy, the female vox all reverby and murky, the sound distorted and lo-fi, plenty of tambourine, and bop bop boy background vocals, jangly and hooky and so catchy, a total summer jam if there ever was one. But folks who think maybe Yuck were a one trick pony / one hit wonder are in for a serious surprise, as the record opens with a song we think is even better than "Georgia", with its fuzzed out Dinosaur guitars, and melancholy melodies, not to mention some killer super melodic leads. There's also a low slung bass heavy verse, the vocals laid back and slackery, backed up by spidery guitars, and then the chorus, a gorgeously hook filled explosion of slightly twangy sunshiney fuzz pop bliss. "The Wall" is just as good, casting the current garage rock sound of folks like Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall as something much more early nineties college rock, and "Shook Down" is all sun dapped soft focus jangle pop, with acoustic guitars, heartfelt vox and chiming melodies.
The rest of the record plays out much like you'd expect, from the strummy almost Brit pop sounding "Suicide Policeman" to the buzzy distorto pop of "Holing Out", from the moody, hazy almost Mazzy Star sounding "Suck" to the distorto dirge pop of "Rubber", it may play out like a flashback to the good old days, but Yuck definitely make that sound all their own, somehow creating something fresh and new, from a sound we can never get tired of.
So good!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Minimal, spaced-out bliss/drone/mope rock heavy on the ambient side, for fans of Jessamine and the like. On Ben Goldberg's dependable BaDaBing imprint.
