Richard Youngs

Richard Youngs is a musician, composer, songwriter, and improviser based in Glasgow.

After nearly four decades of uninterrupted activity, Youngs’ work, like few others in contemporary music, radiates the simple joy of exploration and experimentation.

As all Youngs fans know, one of the great pleasures of following his career is the difficulty of predicting what his next release in his inexhaustible series of albums will bring: unaccompanied vocals? Country songs? Minimalist music? Contemporary pop productions? Shakuhachi? Guitar pieces played with his feet? A wailing fuzz bass over hyper-fast, distorted drum machine rhythms?

Continuing Youngs’ great tradition of exploring new techniques, instruments, and approaches while adding his own unique touch, his latest album on Black Truffle is an assemblage of moog, hypnotic patterns, vocals, samples, and synthetic claps that form ethereal structures halfway between minimalist music, pop, dub, and hip hop.

Richard Youngs seeks, as he himself says, to “be himself above all else.” He rarely performs live, so it’s difficult to predict exactly what form the concert scheduled for March 10 at Le Périscope will take, except that Youngs will use at least piano, guitar, percussion, his voice of course, and any other elements we are willing to give him.