After countless unforgettable performance at OTO over the years, Glasgow-based musical polymath Richard Youngs shares with us absorbing new work:
"It has the trajectory of an imaginary Oto performance: I start all-guns-blazing. Five minutes in, and I can't maintain the energy, but want to push the sense of excitement. Ten minutes and things begin to fall apart. Onward. Equipment is failing. Time to bring it right down, and stretch out. While the SuperCollider code may be running, the rhythm pre-sets have packed-in, the laptop and tape machine I am using for backing sound faulty. Whoever is in charge of the P.A. is doing a grand job - everything is present and they have pushed the vocal way forward. I don't know if I am drawing the audience in, or if I am lost to them. Near the close I walk away, leave the machines running. And when they stop, there's a slight nervousness. Is that it?" - Richard Youngs
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Richard Youngs - code, rhythm pre-sets, distress, vocals.
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Recorded & mixed by Richard Youngs
Born in Cambridge and raised in the Fens, Richard Youngs began making music at the start of the seventies. His early work centred on the family piano. When this was sold in the late seventies, however, the classical guitar and cassette recorder became his instruments of choice, along with anything at hand that made a sound. From then on he has played any number of roles with bands such as Astral Social Club, Concrete Hedge, No Deserts, Jandek and Future Pilot A.K.A. Recent collaborative work with Andrew Paine, Heatsick, Kawabata Makoto and John Clyde-Evans also show him as a highly social musician.
His catalogue of releases wanders into all kinds of zones over a vast array of albums on various labels including his No Fans imprint: they include accapella, guitars, pipes or electronics and come out of solitude and in partnership with atmospheres that range from fragmental folk to all-out fuzz.
“THE iconic figure of the modern UK underground … Richard Youngs evolves in the shadows where most won’t look, but those who do will forever be dazzled and amazed” – The Quietus
