Richard Youngs: Memory Ain't No Decay review – into the edgelands with a musical gem

(Wayside & Woodland)

As many musicians fret, vacillate and self-medicate their way out of actually writing their next record, Richard Youngs just gets on with it. The Scotland-based singer-songwriter, operating since the early 90s, has released 17 albums in the last two years alone (not including collaborations such as the brilliant Scottish disco supergroup Amor) and has three more out this month, with Memory Ain’t No Decay joined soon by Onder/Stroom, a collaboration with Dutch electronic producers Frans de Waard and Peter Johan Nÿland, and another solo album, Dissident. His quavering yet strident voice is a bright silver thread through British music; his singing style, somewhere between conversation and benediction, recalls everything from sea shanties to Gaelic psalm singing, Mark E Smith to the Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan. The neatest description of him probably comes in the title of his 2005 album The Naive Shaman.

Memory Ain’t No Decay’s three songs begin with the 15-minute stunner Edge of Everywhere. A blues guitar scratches rhythmically under a softer, echo-treated electric line, a combination that would be almost Balearic if it didn’t keep tripping up and going out of time – a technique that keeps the song constantly alive and alert. Youngs gives it one of his more spiritual vocal lines, even slightly reminiscent of devotional Punjabi singing. Still Learning is powered by a strummed guitar line that scans as generic on first listen, but extended over 11 minutes, its campfire familiarity becomes lulling, even meditative, topped with a kindly song from Youngs. The shorter Not My Eyes has an uncertain mass of bass tones and fingerpicking held together by steady plucking. Charged by Wayside & Woodland’s label head to consider the voguish psychogeographical concept of “edgelands” – spaces between the urban and rural – it would have been easy for Youngs to lapse into bland wonderment, but he ends up affirming that nature is both beautiful and impulsive.

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas via Electronic music | The Guardian

Sharon Van Etten: Remind Me Tomorrow review – assured, gorgeous electro-tinged progression

(Jagjaguwar)

Like all of Sharon Van Etten’s previous albums, 2014’s Are We There was preoccupied by a prior toxic relationship – co-dependency couched in a sour combination of abuse and affection. Its follow-up opens with a track that references that period of disquieting soul-baring in the form of a meta-confessional: I Told You Everything has Van Etten divulging the details of her traumatic past to a sympathetic new partner, but not the listener. It’s a move that acknowledges the musician’s suffering but also inches the story forward, hinting that the New Jersey native has a different life now (a suggestion confirmed by her hectic-sounding recent biography: over the past four years she has had a child, taken up acting and started studying for a degree in counselling). Change is something echoed in the sound of Remind Me Tomorrow too, a collection that sees Van Etten edge away from her trademark guitar and towards drones, piano and vintage synths.

Related: Sharon Van Etten: ‘The more I let go, the more I progress as a human being’

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by Rachel Aroesti via Electronic music | The Guardian

The birth of Asian underground: ‘This music was for us and by us, and that was very powerful’

Twenty years ago a new movement blending eastern sounds with electro and drum’n’bass arrived to give a generation of young British Asians a vibrant new voice. Why did it fade away so quickly?

When most Brits think of Asian music – if they do at all – they might conjure a twanging sitar and the high-pitched vocals of a Bollywood dance sequence blaring in an Indian restaurant, or the meditative chimes and chanting of a yoga session. In reality, of course, Asian music is a vast and diverse series of musical disciplines, and one that had been reduced, in the UK, to the reserve of anoraks and first-generation immigrants. But in the 90s, a scene came along to change all of that.

Twenty years ago, the Asian underground was born. A product of the first wave of Asian immigration into the UK in the early 60s and their children growing up in a newly diversifying society – one imbued with the racism of the National Front, as well as with a burgeoning multiculturalism from the Caribbean and west Africa – the music these first-generation British Asians made was full of internal tension. It was a mix of Indian classical instrumentals, Bollywood singing, jazz and the 90s club sounds of dub, drum’n’bass and jungle.

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by Ammar Kalia via Electronic music | The Guardian

'If it moves me to tears, I've achieved what I wanted': nature's songwriter Erland Cooper

With geese as backing singers and a thousand children singing like starlings, the musician is sending his emotive ‘sonic postcards’ from Orkney to London

The rain lashes down, the wind whistles and a skein of pink-footed geese fly overhead, honking in the twilight, as Erland Cooper’s concert begins. Cley Marshes nature reserve on the Norfolk coast is an unusual place for a gig, but the perfect stage for an evening of music inspired by the birds of Orkney.

Cooper, known for the folk-rock of Erland and the Carnival and the more experimental soundscapes of the Magnetic North, migrated to new terrain for his debut solo album Solan Goose, released last year. With its combination of contemporary classical, ambient and electronica, it drew comparisons to Sigur Rós, Ólafur Arnalds and other music of northerly latitudes, as well as radio play and winning admirers in unexpected places, from literary figures including John Burnside and Robert Macfarlane.

I’m always trying to write the simplest thing, trying to do more with fewer notes

Nest, a light and sound installation, is in the grounds of the William Morris Gallery, London, 11-13 January. Erland Cooper is at Trades Club, Hebden Bridge, on 30 March. Solan Goose is out now on Rough Trade.

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by Patrick Barkham via Electronic music | The Guardian

Tunisian techno, Xitsongan rap and Satanic doo-wop: the best new music of 2019

From cheeky rappers to explosive hardcore punks, we introduce 50 artists sure to make an impact in the coming year

She has already sung backing vocals for Chance the Rapper, guested on Sam Smith’s last album and steals the show on Mark Ronson’s forthcoming LP of “sad bangers” – all because of a truly remarkable voice that marks her out as the coming year’s Adele. Here’s hoping her superhuman vocal control will be put to service on equally strong songs.

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by Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Laura Snapes and Ammar Kalia via Electronic music | The Guardian