Richard Youngs

All Music Guide:

A multi-instrumentalist from Glasgow, Richard Youngs began releasing albums in the early '90s on various independent labels. His music ranges from pure experimental, instrumental, minimal, and avant-garde through to folk-inspired songwriting and progressive rock. In songwriting mode, he is similar to Robert Wyatt, Anthony Moore, and in particular other fine acts from Glasgow John Martyn and the Incredible String Band. In his more experimental projects with Simon Wickham-Smith and Brian Lavelle, the cacophonous roar is closer in style to '90s noise underground artists such as the Dead C, Sun City Girls, and White Winged Moth.

Youngs' CDs Advent and Festival were released on Table of the Elements and other indie labels. Majora and VHF released his solo efforts and collaborations with likeminded musicians such as Stephen Todd and (most commonly) with Wickham-Smith. Youngs has produced an expansive body of work and his recordings are diverse and cover many different areas of musical interest. There is a common thread in his material that links his recordings, however, an uplifting defiant and playful attitude giving the albums a common charm, in that they expose the artist as joyously indulging in the delights of a hermetic and musical world. That is not to say that his music is obscure by any means; he has a network of publishers and followers the world over.

The Japanese Meme label released a Youngs CD in 1998 under the title of House Music; it was not the exploration into dance music that one might expect, but in fact a series of candid recordings made with his father in their home -- taking a literal interpretation of the title, one can hear rhythmic door slamming, crescendos up and down the staircase, and all manner of music and noise generated using architecture as an instrument. The Advent album from the early '90s is cited as a minimalist classic. That Youngs recorded it with only a kazoo and acoustic guitar does not suggest the complexity of the music, and in many ways this work navigates the territory occupied by American avant-garde minimalist masters Tony Conrad and Terry Riley, albeit with the laid-back ease of a post-punk autodidact. Elsewhere, he made recordings that predate Autechre and Oval in that they exploit the deconstruction of digital music systems, and the Radios series of CDs documents this side of his interests, while at the opposite end of the spectrum he recorded folk-inflected mantras with guiding lights of the English folk revival Shirley Collins and Bert Jansch; moonlight recordings seem a guiding principle.

For fans of intimate music, Youngs recorded many of his albums at home on portable recording equipment ranging in quality, but on record achieved beautiful and unique sounds from any range of instruments: kazoo, guitar, Casio organs, clock chimes, synthesizers, kitchen implements, and small percussion. A good comparison would be to the Tall Dwarves, whose home recording ethic started the lo-fi movement in New Zealand, or to the '80s Rough Trade and Creation artists such as Raincoats, My Bloody Valentine, and the Pastels. Like these artists, Youngs' recordings are charming in their inventive and experimental use of recording equipment. Using limited resources, he archives colorful and eccentric results and often reaches highly emotive peaks, as on the album Sapphie, a mournful suite eulogizing a friend by that charming name. Although his time spent as a sonic experimenter could still be heard in the attention to detail that graced his releases, Sapphie's appearance in 1999 signaled a new dedication to folkier sounds for Youngs.

He appeared next in 2001 in collaboration with Japanese guitarist and Acid Mothers Temple leader Makoto Kawabata and on a new solo outing, Making Paper. May arrived in 2002, followed the next year by Airs of the Ear; River Through Howling Sky was released in 2004. Rarely performing live, tours were forfeited in favor of his full-time profession as a writer and columnist for vegetarian cooking tips. Youngs was not entirely averse to live performance, however, and in 2005 he marked a notable appearance as a sideman as bassist for the first live appearance of the reclusive and often mythologized Jandek. The performance was documented for posterity on Glasgow Sunday. Later that year, two new Youngs recordings emerged, Naïve Shaman on Jagjaguwar and Partick Rain Dance on VHF.

Youngs continued to refine and shift his manner of composing and recording. In 2007 he released Autumn Response, a collection of intimate songs on which he accompanied himself only on acoustic guitar, but liberally applied digital delay on both his voice and the six-string to lend a dreamy quality to the proceedings. In 2009 Youngs issued a pair of albums, Like a Neuron on Dekorder and the brief, minimal, but emotionally resonant collection Under Stellar Stream on Jagjaguwar, where his singing voice was accompanied by bass, organ, harmonica, minimal percussion, piano, and synth. Youngs resumed his prolific pace in 2010 with Beyond the Valley of the Ultrahits, his first attempt to make a pop album -- albeit one with his own unique take on that notion.

Wikipedia:

Richard Youngs is a British musician with a prolific and diverse output, including many collaborations. Based in Glasgow since the early 1990s, his extensive back catalogue of solo and collaborative work formally begins with Advent, first issued in 1990. He plays many instruments, most commonly choosing the guitar, but he has been known to use a wide variety of other instruments including the shakuhachi, accordion, theremin, dulcimer, a home-made synthesizer (common on early recordings) and even a motorway bridge. He also released an album which was entirely a cappella.

For many years, live performances were very occasional and almost always in Glasgow; he has stated publicly that he finds live performance "incredibly nerve-racking: stomach cramps, tension headaches...". However, in recent years, he has performed more regularly (including a tour of New Zealand in 2010 and a UK tour in support of Damon and Naomi in 2011) and many of his recent shows have been predominantly vocal - he told The Wire (issue 284) "I went to a laptop concert and decided I was going to sing".Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

Style[edit]

His music has been noted for its diversity, with Dusted saying that he had been "defying strict genre classifications since the early nineties, swapping labels, styles, partners, motifs, and recording techniques as the desire has struck him". He has been recording for most of his life, telling Foxy Digitalis that "I've made music as long as I can remember - ever since I was a child - and recorded the stuff as long as I've had the technology - I began with a cheap cassette player. So, it's strange to think what it'd be like not to make or record music. It seems unnatural!". When reviewing his 1996 CD Festival, Melody Maker described him as "grand-meister of contemporary British improv, spiritual son of Eddie Prevost and Maddy Prior; gentle manipulator of English hymn-notics and religious incantations; protege, challenger and radicaliser of folk, blues, rock, minimalism and improvisation; translator for the sea and the rain and the sky; ambassador to war and peace, to love and anguish".

It could be suggested his musical styles range from folk to progressive rock to improvisation to electronics. Early works were characterized by a somewhat minimalist lo-fi production quality, with Youngs working mostly on a reel-to-reel 4-track machine or recording directly to minidisc. However, he has been using professional standard computer-based recording systems for over a decade.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

Collaborations[edit]

A keen collaborator, he has released albums with Matthew Bower, Brian Lavelle, Neil Campbell, Stephen Todd, Makoto Kawabata, Alex Neilson, Andrew Paine (under their given names and under the group names Ilk and Urban Parable), Telstar Ponies, and his longest standing partner, Simon Wickham-Smith. He has performed live with Heather Leigh Murray, Vibracathedral Orchestra and also with Matthew Bower's groups Sunroof! and Skullflower. He was also a member of the collective A Band.

Jandek[edit]

Youngs has also gained attention from his live performances for the notoriously reclusive American avant-folk/blues singer-songwriter Jandek. Youngs can be heard on the Glasgow Sunday, Newcastle Sunday and Glasgow Monday albums, which were recorded at Jandek's first 3 (known) live performances. He also appears on Glasgow Friday and Camber Sands Sunday. There was one further show at which Youngs appeared but drummer Alex Neilson (who completed the line-up on all these shows) has advised the Brainwashed website that this performance - at Mono in Glasgow on 18 May 2006 (the day after the performance released as "Bristol Wednesday") - did not record successfully. For some time, this left no further available live performances with Youngs as a participant were available for release. However, the trio reunited in Manchester, UK on 21 April 2012 and again in Glasgow on 6 April 2013.

A Jandek studio album was released on Corwood Industries in 2011 titled Where Do You Go From Here. As with all Jandek releases, no performer credits are listed. However, some listeners have claimed that the album was recorded by the trio of Smith, Youngs and Neilson, with Youngs' voice being identified on some tracks.Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page).

Labels[edit]

He has recorded for over a dozen independent record labels, with VHF releasing much of his collaborative work and Jagjaguwar issuing many of solo albums, their first being a reissue of Sapphie. Other labels have included Dekorder, Fourth Dimension, Freek, Fusetron, Majora, Table of the Elements, Volcanic Tongue and his own labels, beginning with Jabberwok in the 1980s, and then the self-deprecatingly named No Fans Records.

No Fans Records[edit]

Richard founded No Fans Records 1990 and he releases only his own solo and collaborative work through the imprint with some items released in very small numbers. A number of No Fans releases have been reissued in larger editions by other labels.

NFR discography

Recent work[edit]

In recent years, Youngs has performed live more often, including shows in the UK, Canada and Italy. He toured New Zealand in late 2010. His release schedule is as prolific as ever, especially with Andrew Paine with whom he has now released more than 20 albums. In 2009 he released a "pop" album, Beyond The Valley Of Ultrahits on Paine's Sonic Oyster Records label and this was reissued on vinyl by Jagjaguwar in 2010. 20 Years, a four-disc set commemorating his partnership with Simon Wickham Smith was released by the VHF label in 2010.