Richard Youngs
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.
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.
Amplifying Host
Amplifying Host finds Richard Youngs wandering the guitar desert somewhere between Ry Cooder's Paris, Texas score and Neil Young's work on Dead Man. Yet, the randomly determined chord movements and Youngs' stretched-out vocal passes across the record are, perhaps, more akin to Jandek's Six And Six -- here, removed from its gauze and dipped in a dark gold. When Youngs bends strings in this anglo-americana vision, it's like he's bending spoons.For more than 20 years, the UK's Richard Youngs has be…
I Dream of Mezzanine / Cloudplanes
The Spring Press is very pleased to announce the release of a new masterpiece by the one and only Richard Youngs. A commanding new exploration of his interest in the composition of voice and electronics. Utilising motif and repition each work is rich, detailed and slowly developing, both tracks spanning over sixteen minutes each.
20 years
20 Years” is a celebration of 20 years of music from Richard and Simon, featuring 4 previously unreleased albums. The set includes an all new LP, “20 Years,” that is the first new vinyl from R!!! and S!!! in almost 15 years. The other three projects presented here on CD were all completed and intended for release by the duo during their prolific 1990’s, but fell by the wayside for various reasons. “20 Years” is a newly recorded LP, and is one of the heaviest, most uncompromising records of Richa…
Beyond the Valley of Ultrahits
Thus was the simple dare handed to Richard Youngs from his friend Andrew "Paz" Paine during their weekly Sunday meet-up. Ever the modest master, Youngs said in accepting this friendly challenge that he merely endeavored to capture the "beats and hooks" of contemporary pop. He's never attempted to disguise his gift for catchy musical phrases, though they may have come by way of careening, pleading, soothing or challenging multi-tracked voices.We present the results here as Beyond The Valley Of Ul…
Advent
Jagjaguwar is now proud to reissue this very important work on vinyl as well. Advent became a true underground success story, a critical darling, with Alan Licht, for example, putting it on his 'minimal top ten list' in the publication Halana. 'It is a record by an intense young man,' writes Richard Youngs, in an essay packaged with the record." Kinda amazing to have this record back on vinyl, in the year 2006. Originally recorded in 1988, it features Richard on electric guitar, piano, oboes and…
Under Stellar Stream
For his latest album, UK avant-folk maverick Richard Youngs seems to be converging on some of the most assured and firm-footed vocal work of his career to date, fashioning rock-solid songs from typically leftfield instrumental tactics. On 'Broke Up By Night', Youngs sounds like a gnarled old folkie of almost Ewan MacColl proportions, albeit accompanied by organ drone and wispy electronics. It's a rather magical, mantra-like cadence he elicits, and the album springboards nicely from this point. S…
Summer Wanderer
“Summer Wanderer” is a sideslip in the discography of the Scottish avant folk musician Richard Youngs because it’s the only acappella release in his eminent and extensive list of recordings.“Summer Wanderer” was released for the first time in 2004 in an edition of twenty copies. For close friends only. A year later, Youngs re-released these recordings on his own No Fans imprint. So this vinyl release on the Ghent based Gipsy Sphinx label can actually be called a re-re-release. But that doesn’t m…
Like A Neuron
Richard Youngs is a prolific British musician (located in Glasgow) with an extremely diverse output. Dusted Magazine once wrote he is defying strict genre classifications since the early nineties, swapping labels, styles, partners, motifs, and recording techniques as the desire has struck him. So his new album for Dekorder might not be a surprise to anyone following his career. Still, a self-proclaimed all-electronic 'ecstatic House record' comes somewhat unexpected. With a line of distinctive s…
s/t
Debut album from the duo of Richard Youngs and Tirath Singh Nirmala (nee John Clyde-Evans) that has the pair creating a bucolic minimalist meditation. Side one interchangeably features hammered strings, gong/cymbal washes, droning vocals, and breathed shackuhachi/flutes. The second side leads with a melodious encounter before delving further into a glimmering psychedelia with sawed strings, fluttering reed organ and electronic drift. The results resemble a non-western approach to traditional mus…
171 Used Train Tickets
The Old Angel, Nottingham, 1990. It was the A-Band's third live show and we were calling ourselves Advent for the evening in honour of a local record shop who -- judging by their filing system -- thought they were stocking an album entitled 'Richard Youngs' by Advent rather than Advent by Richard Youngs. For reasons that escape me now, I'd hoarded 171 used train tickets. It felt like a cool idea to read them out. So I did. Not in the privacy of my own home, but to an audience. They seemed to enj…
Electric Lotus
This epic double set combines an LP of all-electric rock mayhem with a CD of subtle drum/shakuhachi tracks. Electric Lotus is the Youngs and Neilson's self-proclaimed 'rock' album, and it is a mind-boggling clutch of guitar/bass/drums demolition. Coming off like an amphetamine-fueled Guru Guru, the music tumbles out in a crazy quilt of stun-level attack zonage, especially on the side-long Electric Lotus. Neilson's staggering freedrumming hits a new peak here, stepping beyond his laudable work wi…
Autumn Response
Autumn Response is a spartan folk-"pop" record filled with tinder-box intimacies, composed of some of the shortest songs ever recorded by Richard Youngs. The simplest form of trickery comes from Richard Youngs' restrained use of an acoustic guitar, bringing it back to Youngs basics. Twenty-six seconds into "I Need the Light", the first track off the album, the listener is confronted with the pivotal element of the record, the drawing line between the hardcore Youngs purists and fairweather fans:…
Sapphie
Now available for the first time as a vinyl LP. Originally issued as CD in 1998 by Oblique Recordings, Sapphie was Richard Youngs' fifth solo full-length and quite a unique album in his already unique oeurve. Made up of three acoustic tracks -- spanning over 37 minutes in length -- featuring just classical guitar and voice, Sapphie is quiet and introspective. The songs feel like an intimate journey by hand through a song cycle of loss and renewal. Within the context of his massive and ever-growi…