Undercurrents: Vinyl LP

Label: Drag City/Yoga Records
Release Date: 30th May

Experimental meditations, electronic tones made on 1970s IBM mainframes, twisting and turning marimbas on one track, fragile poetry readings over dulcimer's hammering out like the tinkering of a music box. The kind of record to really float away and let your mind slip away with. 

For those who dig: Brian Eno, Steve Reich, Carl Orff...

Drag City and Yoga Records are delighted to return to the music of Matthew
Young. Following ‘Recurring Dreams’ (1981, reissued 2014) and ‘Traveler’s
Advisory’ (1986, reissued 2010), ‘Undercurrents’ collects eight oddly
dissimilar pieces that somehow fit together perfectly. Although unique
enough to be called outsider, Young’s new album occupies a musical world
accessible to fans of many genres.

Matthew Young, born in 1950, grew up in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. When
he showed early musical interest, his parents bought an upright piano, and
Matthew began taking lessons. In his teens, he attended concerts by Duke
Ellington, Dave Brubeck, and Count Basie, and grew up to discover
iconoclasts such as Erik Satie, Charles Ives, John Cage, Harry Partch, Brian
Eno, and experimental rock groups such as Can and Harmonia. He also
regularly attended and played at folk music gatherings in the nearby New
Jersey Pine Barrens.

In the late 1970s, Young took a summer seminar on computer music at
Princeton taught by Richard Cann and Michael Dellaira. Inspired, Young
bought his own EMS Synthi and Revox tape recorder and began working on
electronic music at home. His music began to appear in local theatre
productions, leading to the 1981 release of ‘Recurring Dreams’, through New
York distributor NMDS. The Trenton Times described the record as “an
album of liquid, effervescent keyboard tones; tingling, trembling notes; and
surprising, occasionally bizarre effects.”

Later, Young became obsessed with the hammered dulcimer, and in 1986 he
released a new album, ‘Traveler’s Advisory’, which featured the instrument
prominently, along with electronics, tape effects, and his first foray into
vocals.

Composed and recorded over the span of several decades, ‘Undercurrents’
displays the wide range of Young’s various sonic pallets: similar to ‘Recurring
Dreams’, the electronic landscapes meander coherently, and much like
‘Traveler’s Advisory’, the album skews from the nearly algorithmic computer
music of side one to the moving pastoral folk of the second.

On the opener, ‘Reflexion’, a quartet of marimbas twist and turn over each
other, while in ‘One and All’ a harp melody is overtaken by various electronic
effects. The 12-minute title track is an abstract weaving of piano and
synthesis, with the six sections named after oceanic currents.

‘A Game of Chess, a Game of Chance’ consists of sparse electronic tones
created on the Princeton University IBM mainframe during his studies in
1976. This all makes way for the second half of ‘Undercurrents’, where
settings of Marion Lineaweaver’s poems, ‘The Summer Girls’ and ‘Her Key is
Minor’ showcase Young’s honest, fragile vocal approach, conveying a deep
sense of soulful longing, and the latter even sweetly approaching something
akin to synthpop. The piano on ‘Inflexion’ calls back to the end of ‘Reflexion’,
and in the album closer, ‘Into the Woods’, Young plays the hammered
dulcimer with the disciplined reverence of an alchemist.

Simply put, ‘Undercurrents’ is a triumph across many musical realms... this is
Matthew Young’s world.