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Richard Youngs is a reclusive musician from Scotland whose work was devoted
for a long time to "lo-fi" improvisations inspired by minimalism and
John Fahey's instrumental folk music.
His first album,
Advent (1988 - Table Of The Elements, 1998 - Jagjaguwar, 2004), contains three lengthy spectral
improvisations for piano, guitar, oboe and voice. The noisy guitar makes the
difference: it sounds as if Terry Riley had been locked up in a madhouse.
A prolific collaboration with
Simon Wickham-Smith began on
the four lengthy free-form noise collages/jams of Lake (1990 - VHF, 1997).
Ceaucescu (Forced Exposure, 1992) is perhaps the most accomplished of
the series: chaotically orchestrated for dulcimer, keyboards, guitars, psychedelia
and cacophony, it also entirely sung and it exudes an almost religious feeling out of the hyper-psychedelic cacophony. In their quirky musical
excursions the duo manage to fuse the majestic and the amateurish
(I Live In A Big City, Goat, At Home).
Kretinmuzak (Slask, 1994) adds one more epic-length work,
The Proof Of The Point, and
Asthma And Diabetes (Forced Exposure, 1994) contains two more (notably Diabetes for more than 20 instruments)
Next came the single
Worried About Heaven (Fourth Dimension, 1994)
and the EP 444d (Fourth Dimension, 1995).
Enedkeg (Majora, 1996) indulges in otherworldly drones and adds another
lengthy dissonant piece to the canon, More Urban Music for the Middle Of Nowhere.
Veil (Insignificant, 1997) added sampler, rhythm machine and synthesizer, notably in the lengthy Angels From CT.
The live improvisations of Knish (Ignivomous, 1996),
and Red And Blue Bear (Insignificant, 1997), with more electronics and less structure (ostensibly a children's album replete with folkish melodies), were minor versions of their aesthetic.
Finally, Pulse Of The Rooster (VHF, 1998) was a simpler work, basically psychedelic pop for late hippies (Shanti Deva).
New Angloid Sound (Forced Exposure, 1993) contains covers of traditional
folk music performed on guitar and kazoo.
Other collaborations include
Durian Durian (Forced Exposure, 1993) with
Neil Campbell, Simon Wickham-Smith and Stewart Walden (each artist created his
own music independently, and later Youngs mixed them together),
Radios (Freek, 1996) and Radios 2 (Freek, 1996) with Brian Lavelle,
Site / Realm (VHF, 1995) and Relayer (2002) with Skullflower's guitarist Matthew Bower,
and Ilk's Zenith (1998) with a poet.
Festival (Table Of The Elements, 1996) was only his third solo
album and contained five compositions for one-man band. Youngs tried to turn
the elements of his lengthy improvisations with
Wickham-Smith into full-fledged but shorter and structured songs. The result
was a hodgepodge of amateurish imitations of psychedelic music.
Georgians (VHF, 1996) is a collaboration with Stephen Todd. Most of the
tracks sound like brief experiments. Even the two longer tracks sound more
like ideas than like music
(Sixteen 00 is merely repetition for the sake of repetition).
House Music (Meme, 1997) returns to Festival's music for
lo-fi home-made instruments and found noises, and ranks among his best works.
A new artist emerged at the end of the decade, an artist whose roots were in
the folk-singer tradition of the 1970s, not in the minimalists of the 1960s.
The three lengthy compositions on Sapphie (1998, Jagjaguwar, 2000) are
slow and tender "ballads" for voice and guitar, that owe much more to folk
than to avantgarde music
(Soon It Will Be Fire, A Fullness Of Light In Your Soul,
The Graze Of Days).
Making Paper (Jagjaguwar, 2000) is a recital of plaintive piano-based
lieder that sound like Nick Drake dirges or
Incredible String Band lullabies
dilated via
Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom.
The 19-minute psalm Warriors is hyper-slocore: the voice unfolds the
melody at a very slow pace, while the hand occasionally hits the keyboard of
the piano. Silence prevails over music.
The 22-minute Only Halogonian is dominated by a quiet, endless-looping
neoclassical piano carillon, slowly interlaced with Young's liturgical singing.
Youngs also recorded an album of duets with Kawabata Makoto (VHF, 2001),
a collaboration with the Vibracathedral Orchestra's Neil Campbell,
How The Garden Is (Harpendedn, 2001) and an album with
Sunroof and Vibracathedral Orchestra, Freak On (VHF, 2001).
The "Radios" series with Brian Lavelle (basically, free-form noise)
has continued over the years with
Radios 3-4-5 (Freek, 1997) and Radios 6-7-8 (Bake, 2001).
The harsh, post-industrial
Metallic Sonatas (VHF, 1999) and
LAmmERGEIER (VHF, 2001) are new collaborations with Simon Wickham-Smith
that open new "metallic" avenues for their improvisation.
May (Jagjaguar, 2002), humbly arranged for acoustic guitar and voice,
sounds like a continuation of Sapphie, but without the same focus
and intensity.
Youngs also recorded four untitled duets with
Acid Mothers Temple's leader Makoto Kawabata,
released on an untitled album (VHF, 2002).
Airs of the Ear (Jagjaguwar, 2003) runs the gamut from the
evocative and philosophical Life on the Stream to the
sinister and discordant Fire Horse Rising, while radiating
ecstasy (Oh My Stars), romance (Halifax Amore) and
fear (Machaut's Dream).
Youngs has entered a more personal and musical phase of his life/career.
He now composes real songs that aim at delivering real meaning, rather
than abstract soundpainting aimed at shocking the listener.
Ourselves (VHF, 2004) and
Partrick Rain Dance (VHF, 2005)
document performances with percussionist Alexander Neilson, that include
both covers and acid jams.
in particular the 16-minute Music Of The Last Sun,
River Through Howling Sky (Jagjaguar, 2004) marks further progress
towards
simplicity and the inner world, although the lugubrious 24-minute blues
Red Cloud Singular
sounds a bit self-indulgent (six of those minutes would have been enough).
The Ilk project was revived by Canticle (2005).
The Naive Shaman (Jagjaguwar, 2005)
A major detour in his career, Summer Wanderer (2005) was a moving
a-cappella album.
5 Years (VHF, 2006) collects material composed during five years with
Wickham-Smith.
Belsayer (Time-Lag, 2006) is a collaboration among
Alastair Galbraith, Richard Youngs and Alex Neilson that yields
some languid droning ragas.
Youngs also recorded a collaboration with Tirath Singh Nirmala (aka John Clyde-Evans), Untitled (HP Cycle, 2007).
Fascinated by the shakuhachi, Youngs experimented on
Multi-Tracked Shakuhachi (2006), another highlight of his versatile
career.
Road Is Open Life (Celebrate Psi, 2006) is the fourth collaboration with
drummer Alex Neilson, another venture into progressive-rock and acid-rock.
Electric Lotus (2007) combines an LP of rock music (with
drummer Alex Neilson) with a CD of chamber duets for shakuhachi and percussion.
Autumn Response (2007) was a bad version of
Sapphie (1998), an album of pieces for acoustic guitar that left behind
the artifices of droning, distortion and studio manipulation for a simple
take on old-fashioned folk music. The lullabies were repetitive and monotonous.
The 17-minute Something Like Air was the only one that matched the magic
of Sapphie.
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