Richard Youngs - Blue Thirty-Nine (2021)

One of the best things about running your own micro-label is - as well as sometimes being first on the scene with an exciting new artist or approach - occasionally getting to work in a creative capacity with musicians that are personal heroes. So it is with Richard Youngs, whose truly unique music I have loved since encountering the shattering psych-folk classic Airs of The Ear back in 2003 (and which remains one of my all-time favourite albums).

One of the two best Richards currently operating in popular music (the other being Richard Dawson), Richard Youngs has put his name to around 170 releases over the last three decades. I can’t pretend to have heard all of them, but certainly each one I have heard has felt cosmically unforced - as natural and pure as breathing - while at the same time sounding somehow like little else, except, well, Richard.

So, while Richard’s contribution to the Blue Tapes series skews away from the minimal, transcendent soul songs of his popular albums, like River Through Howling Sky or Belief – deeper into abstraction and repetition – there is identifiably the same powerful instincts guiding these four mantric compositions.

Something about the insistent pluck of the 7-string nylon-strung guitar still goes hard for the gut, and your head is tantalised always by those characteristic smears and dots of aliensound – here provided by wordless manipulated tape loops of Richard’s voice.

This is really playful, fun music. My favourite song is track 2, Sudden Thoughts on Slow Insurrection. It might not have words or a ‘chorus’ as such, but to me this is a pop song, spinning merrily between A and B sections with Richard thunking away on the baritone acoustic with a catchy, jaunty riff and hiccupping vocal refrain. You could easily forget that these are tape loops, he sounds so satisfied and lost in the sound, happy to plonk away on his pop song forever. I can imagine flappers dancing to it in some alternative 1920s of the mind, stuck in a psychedelic Charleston time-loop, scrolling back and forth.

Each of these four songs suits a different mood, so I think each has its own equal potential to be someone’s favourite song. Whether it’s the triumphant massed choir of Richards on Strange War-Mind Looks at World and it Withers, Moon Thing’s extra-terrestrial pop, or the looping, backwards-masked Richards that sound like they’re calling you to prayer on Escape, there is something here for everyone!