Browse by Label: YOUNG GOD

Artist:	SWANS
Title:	Soundtracks for the Blind
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	2CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	YG 001CD

"Originally released 1997, now reissued in a jewelbox after being out of print for ages. Michael Gira has always been good at establishing finality. Each successive Swans release would have made a spectacular tombstone or constituted an epitaph for which other groups would have killed. Soundtracks for the Blind is no exception to the rule, but this time around even by his own high standards and compared to his low-end excursions of yore, Gira has exceeded himself. As dramatic excursions go, Soundtracks equals the best. Running over two CDs and two-and-a-half-hours, this would be a gruelling enough listen even without the bejeweled brilliance of the ten actual songs nestled among the found-soundscapes, ambient decompositions and twisted electronic noises that constitute the album's remaining sixteen fragments."

Artist:	ANGELS OF LIGHT, THE
Title:	New Mother
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	YG 008CD

"Swans leader Michael Gira's first 'songwriting' project since he discontinued Swans over a year ago. The compositions on New Mother represent powerful, complex and imaginative American songwriting by any standard. Country melancholy flows into raspy blues, dark and psychotic narrative grooves, and gently plucked layers of acoustic and electric guitars, slowly unraveling in psychedelic folk lullabies. Each arrangement is built around solo vocal and acoustic performances -- sometimes incredibly intense, sometimes sensual and understated -- given further variety and psychological depth by orchestration ranging from the stark, raw and expressionist to the lushly cinematic. The instrumentation is appropriately rich and diverse: strings, hammer dulcimer, mandolin, banjo, lap steel guitars, vintage analog synthesizer, choral background vocals, Mellotron, B3 organ, vibraphone, glockenspiel, accordion, double bass, timpani, grand piano and flute."

Artist:	WINDSOR FOR THE DERBY
Title:	Difference And Repetition
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	YG 009CD

"Birthed in Austin in 1994, Windsor for the Derby includes core members are Daniel Matz and Jason McNeely. The amorphous WTD crew includes (on occasion) Rodan's John Weiss, Adam Wiltzie of Stars of the Lid, Wayne Magruder of Bowery Electric/Calla and a host of others. King Coffey's Trance Records released their first full length, Calm Hades Float to good reviews, and the Swans' Michael Gira was impressed to such a degree that he included WFTD on the last-ever Swans tour as an opening act. The sound? Think Pink Floyd's Ummagumma as re-recorded by Joy Division's sadly departed producer Martin Hannett."

Artist:	COULTER, DAVID
Title:	Intervention
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	YG 010CD

"Talented British multi-instrumentalist David Coulter creates a series of 13 somber, deeply resonant, sonic mediations. Coulter plays an array of instruments, including guitar, violin, ukulele, Theremin, mandolin, double bass/bass, didjeridu, mouth harp, musical saw, accordion, harmonium, and others. Mostly instrumental -- though sometimes accompanied by sung, narrated, or chanted vocals. Each piece has its own unique cinematic atmosphere, as if he's briefly tapped into an ongoing, transcendental stream of pre-existing sonic imagery. Low-key, low-tech, and intimate, Coulter's understated and organic music seems to search for something beyond itself-through the juxtaposition of colliding acoustic and electronic sounds, through the obsessively nuanced, ritualized grooves, and through the subtle interaction and improvisation of the wide assortment of players and collaborators. Intervention includes contributions from Marc Ribot, Steve Nieve (of Elvis Costello fame), Terry Edwards, Phil Minton and others."

Artist:	SWANS
Title:	Filth/Body to Body, Job to Job
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	2CD
Price:	$18.00
Catalog #:	YG 011CD

"Another exciting piece of history from one of The Big Apple's meanest, creepiest, most uncompromising bands ever. As with the Various Failures triumph, Filth/Body to Body, Job to Job collects material from one of the band's golden eras, a time when bands like Swans and their contemporaries such as Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth could barely get library cards, let alone featured on the covers of magazines to which they are accustomed today. Disc number one reissues Swans' classic 1983 crawl, recorded by M.Gira, Norman Westberg, Roli Mosimann, Harry Crosby, and Jonathan Kane and features previously unreleased tracks, all recorded live at the Kitchen. Disc number two reissues studio out-takes and live recordings from 1982-85, with a previously unreleased nine-minute version of 'Raping a Slave,' recorded live in Berlin, 1984."

Artist:	FLUX INFORMATION SCIENCES
Title:	Private / Public
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	YG 014CD

"Flux's music is schizophrenic in the extreme, with violent dynamic schisms, bizarre, angular rhythms (but incredibly funky at times), and bursts of noise and violence that abruptly shift into weird, brief passages of cerebral, vaguely menacing soundscapes. The vocals are cryptic, sometimes lurid consumer slogans shouted or chanted over the heaving maelstrom. Their abstracted sense of refined Las Vegas show biz, coupled with their crude, brazen energy reminds me of when I first moved to NYC in 1979 and saw the Contortions at Max's Kansas City." --Michael Gira

Artist:	CALLA
Title:	Scavengers
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	YG 015CD

"Calla are from Texas, and moved to NYC a few years ago. The music is slow and slinky, with deep bass and lots of space and atmosphere. The grooves have a swampy, narcotized-Cajun feel, with hollow-body-twang guitar that snakes and erupts through the mix with signature lines -- Morricone-like sometimes, but more authentically American -- very bluesy, dramatic, and spacious. They use some electronic textures and grooves, too, very tastefully and not gimmicky, just enough to convey a sense of dimension and filmic atmosphere. The vocals are softly intoned and tender, but right up front in the mix." -- Michael Gira

Artist:	ANGELS OF LIGHT, THE
Title:	How I Loved You
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	YG 016CD

"Here is the new Angels of Light album. I wrote the songs over the last couple of years. As it turns out, they're all love songs, in one form or another. The songs started out with just my voice and acoustic guitar, and then developed naturally over time by playing them with my friends -- whose collaboration and contributions are positively inspirational, to me anyway. Our combined sensibilities feel very natural at this point, which I guess comes from having played most of the songs live a lot. The songs were recorded live in the studio, then subjected to my usual lapses of over-orchestration. In this case though, I think I reigned myself in, and the final sound/ picture seems to fit organically with the basic songs and lyrics." --Michael Gira

Artist:	GIRA/D. MATZ, M.
Title:	What We Did
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	YG 017CD

"Dan Matz (Windsor for the Derby, Birdwatcher) and I recorded these songs at his (various) house(s) over the course of two years. This was completely collaborative, in that one of us would present the other a simple, basic idea, and then we'd build on it together, sharing completely in the songwriting process. In general, we alternate lead vocals from song to song throughout the album. We used a variety of instruments, including our voices, acoustic and electric guitars, bass guitar, various organs, piano, synthesizer, drums and percussion (as well as a simple drum machine), harmonica, banjo, a few samples here and there, various toy and miniature percussion instruments. We look at it as a 'pop' record, our view of which, admittedly, might differ from the usual implied connotation." --Michael Gira

Artist:	SWANS
Title:	The Great Annihilator
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	YG 018CD

"Their twelfth album, The Great Annihilator, is a majestic symphony of haunting melodies and shifting moods. Spirituality -- or rather the absence of it -- provides the linking motif. With a kinetic, industrial goose step, 'She Lives' plays with chanted images of madness and martyrdom, while the jagged coda of 'Celebrity Lifestyle' lays the groundwork for a cutting look at material dreams.? 'Warm' forms the album's thematic center, overflowing with ethereal vocal loops and drums that patter like raindrops across the lyrical landscape. On 'Mother/Father' and the mantric 'My Buried Child,' vocalist Jarboe outdoes herself with a spectrum of darkly distinctive voices. Taken on its own, this album is a vivid example of how to combine the dissonant with the dulcet while retaining a dangerous edge. Viewed in the context of the Swans' 12-year journey from audio pornography to majestic romanticism, The Great Annihilator serves as an epic apotheosis."

Artist:	LARSEN
Title:	Rever
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	YG 019CD

"Larsen's ideology seems to be arcane and extreme (though I'm not clear on all the details), and from what I could glean when I recorded their album in their hometown Torino, Italy, they operate as some sort of hermetic cult/collective. With electric guitars, accordion, organ, bass guitar, drums and percussion, their voices, a trumpet or trombone, and an occasional handmade tape loop, Larsen work and work themselves into the core of the rhythm and sounds they generate. Grooves begin with a certain feel and transmute entirely by the time they wring the essence into its final shape, which is what you hear, in edited form, on Rever." -- M. Gira.

Artist:	BANHART, DEVENDRA
Title:	Oh Me Oh My...
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	YG 020CD

"To say Devendra Banhart is unique is an absurd understatement. When I first heard the voice of this completely unknown, precociously talented 21-year-old songwriter, I could not believe it. His occasionally warbling falsetto is alternately bizarre, comical, and often a little frightening. Coupled with his advanced finger-picking guitar style - which itself often veers schizophrenically from gentle grooves into jolting, non-rhythmic stabs and weird harmonic flights of chaos -- and the wildly surreal nature of his truly exceptional lyrics, each of the 21 songs on this CD (some of which clock in at about 30 seconds) contain their own special drama and immediately memorable melodies -- no mean feat when your instrumentation is acoustic guitar and voice, with only the occasional hand clap or whistle thrown in as 'orchestration.' In a popular music environment inundated with computer and electronically generated sound and sanitized ProTools mixes, it's a tremendous relief to hear something so ridiculously compelling, low-tech, utterly personal, and hand-made. The songs were recorded on various borrowed and usually broken 4-track cassette recorders by Banhart himself in various haphazard locations around the globe. These recordings were made solely for himself, and they're better for it -- devoid of any self-consciousness or artifice, just utterly personal and idiosyncratic, magically twisted and imaginative. All kinds of comparisons that might be relevant in describing Banhart -- from Marc Bolan's pre-T. Rex recordings to Daniel Johnston, to Nick Drake's inner purity and pathos, to Karen Dalton (one of Banhart's idols)." --Michael Gira

Artist:	PALESTINE/COULTER/MATHOUL
Title:	Maximin
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	YG 021CD

"On Maximin, the music of the seminal minimalist composer Charlemagne Palestine is reconfigured and reiterated by David Coulter and Jean-Marie Mathoul, in full co-operation and collaboration with Mr. Palestine. Coulter and Mathoul have taken previously recorded works of Mr. Palestine and -- with the full respect due these often transcendent and sacred works -- have interwoven new and/or found sounds, drones, and unexpected textures into an ever-shifting flow that brings new light to these deeply soulful, sonic-sculptural emanations. Recontextualizing the pure and spiritual force of nature that Mr. Palestine's music represents could be a risky musical undertaking, but Coulter and Mathoul pull it off beautifully, inspired solely by their love of and respect for the original works themselves. The mixes have an authentic, handmade sensibility, and even when electronics are occasionally introduced, retain an organic feel."

Artist:	ANGELS OF LIGHT, THE
Title:	Everything Is Good Here, Please Come Home
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	YG 022CD

"The third Angels of Light album started innocently enough, with the intention of collecting well-written songs performed by the musicians who played them live for the last few years, with the addition of a few acoustic songs, lightly colored. Some songs might be construed as sad or poignant, and others 'rock' in a weird, skewed way, sometimes subtle, sometimes excessive. I think I've managed to sort through the chaos, letting the songs discover themselves. It's densely orchestrated in some places, sparse in others. The instrumentation is all over the place, initially built up from my acoustic guitar and voice, then incorporating everything from electronic noise, to banjo and mandolin, bass-drums-electric guitar, (open-tuned) lap steel guitar, vibraphones and marimbas, accordion, fiddles, flutes (yes, flutes), the dreaded children's choir, layered vocal harmonies, drones acquired from various organic sources, piano and Fender Rhodes, trumpet and trombone. It is much, much different than the first two Angels albums." -- Michael Gira

Artist:	BANHART, DEVENDRA
Title:	Rejoicing In The Hands
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	YG 024CD

"With songwriting and guitar-playing that have progressed since Oh Me Oh My The Way The Day Goes By The Sun Is Setting Dogs Are Dreaming Lovesongs Of The Christmas Spirit, and determined not to be ghettoized as a low-fi crank, Devendra Banhart and Michael Gira agreed it was best to move on to professional recording studios. Banhart sat on a stool in that living room for ten days, twelve hours per, playing constantly, sometimes with a chorus of cicadas when they recorded at night with open windows. Overdubs were later added back in NYC. The title tune, a duet with the legendary '60s English folk gamin (one of Banhart idols) Vashti Bunyan -- is an obvious highlight, but Banhart's uncanny ability to transport the listener through words, voice, and pretty amazing finger-picked acoustic guitar is where the album's magic lies."

Artist:	BANHART, DEVENDRA
Title:	Nino Rojo
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	YG 025CD

"Culled from the same sessions as Rejoicing In The Hands, Ni�o Rojo is a companion album -- essentially the second part of a double album. Devendra Banhart is so amazingly magical, unique, and genuine that people just gravitate naturally to his music; best friends' grandmothers relate to it, hard-ass experimentalists enthuse about it, even country/bluegrass purists recognize the man's talents. He emanates joy, generosity, whimsical imagination, superb guitar playing, lyrical complexity, and an absolutely one-of-a-kind voice. Ni�o Rojo does have a little more orchestration than Rejoicing, but that's more by coincidence than anything else, and simply adds a little color to the songs. Not even strictly necessary at all. Everything was there on tape when originally Banhart performed it."

Artist:	ANGELS OF LIGHT, THE
Title:	The Angels of Light Sing Other People
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.00
Catalog #:	YG 027CD

"Another breakthrough for former Swans frontman M. Gira and company -- short, sharply orchestrated, almost-pop songs that access a multitude of musical styles and references. These 12 finely hewn tributes to friends and heroes, stars and scoundrels make this easily the most accessible Angels of Light offering yet. Fiercely melodic, produced with crystal clarity and often bizarrely arranged, each song inhabits its own peculiar world, built up from Gira's intense and ultra-present acoustic guitar and vocal performances -- poignant, uncomfortably personal, comical, deranged. Featured throughout are sometimes subtle, sometimes weirdly psyched-out instrumental and vocal contributions from Brooklyn's eccentric young avant rock savants Akron/Family, making for yet one more rebirth for Gira. Once again, The Angels of Light sound like no one else."

Artist:	AKRON/FAMILY
Title:	Akron/Family
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	YG 028CD

"The music veers from gentle American country folk to unabashed electronic noise, to gathering and erupting crescendos, to extended skronk improvisations that suddenly cut to an LSD version of a backwoods barbershop quartet or a Louvin Brothers spiritual -- sometimes all within the course of one ridiculously long 'song.' Their enthusiasm for pure sound too is evident in instances such as a squeaking chair played by Miles Seaton, all four Akrons simultaneously violently beating their chests, the resulting percussive sound being the air released from their mouths with each beat. As the band recorded with Michael Gira and Jason La Farge, a song would sometimes be described as 'too red' or 'not aluminum enough' or some other arcane reference, but inevitably, corrections made with the aid of a screwdriver or maybe the sanded metal rails of a staircase resulted in an unpredictable but 'correct' result."

Artist:	GERMANO, LISA
Title:	Lullaby for Liquid Pig
Label:	YOUNG GOD
Format:	2CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	YG 036CD

"Nobody makes records like Lisa Germano. This music seeps into your system with a warm glow like alcohol gently working its way into the bloodstream through the lining of an empty stomach. From the first moment you're drifting weightless through Germano's gossamer world, where everything's infused with a woozy, fairytale melancholy, and maybe just a hint of the sour taste of last night's wine. Liquid Pig is beautifully and richly orchestrated, but also so intimate and saturated with a peculiar sadness (that can suddenly shift to joy or whimsy) you get the feeling you're drifting through the dreams inside her head, led along by the soft breeze of her breathing. Germano says that if you removed the breath from her voice there'd be nothing there. That particular quality is perhaps what draws you in -- the sound of a lover whispering a song or a secret in your ear. These songs are intimate, even 'confessional,' but they're certainly not limited to the personal. Seems that any human being with a sense of their own frailty ought to find a place for themselves in this beautiful and seductive music."

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