Drag City and Yoga Records are delighted to return to the music of MatthewYoung. Following ‘Recurring Dreams’ (1981, reissued 2014) and ‘Traveler’sAdvisory’ (1986, reissued 2010), ‘Undercurrents’ collects eight oddlydissimilar pieces that somehow fit together perfectly. Although uniqueenough to be called outsider, Young’s new album occupies a musical worldaccessible to fans of many genres. Matthew Young, born in 1950, grew up in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Whenhe showed early musical interest, his parents bought an upright piano, andMatthew began taking lessons. In his teens, he attended concerts by DukeEllington, Dave Brubeck, and Count Basie, and grew up to discovericonoclasts such as Erik Satie, Charles Ives, John Cage, Harry Partch, BrianEno, and experimental rock groups such as Can and Harmonia. He alsoregularly attended and played at folk music gatherings in the nearby NewJersey Pine Barrens. In the late 1970s, Young took a summer seminar on computer music atPrinceton taught by Richard Cann and Michael Dellaira. Inspired, Youngbought his own EMS Synthi and Revox tape recorder and began working onelectronic music at home. His music began to appear in local theatreproductions, leading to the 1981 release of ‘Recurring Dreams’, through NewYork distributor NMDS. The Trenton Times described the record as“analbum of liquid, effervescent keyboard tones; tingling, trembling notes; andsurprising, occasionally bizarre effects.” Later, Young became obsessed with the hammered dulcimer, and in 1986 hereleased a new album, ‘Traveler’s Advisory’, which featured the instrumentprominently, along with electronics, tape effects, and his first foray intovocals. Composed and recorded over the span of several decades, ‘Undercurrents’displays the wide range of Young’s various sonic pallets: similar to ‘RecurringDreams’, the electronic landscapes meander coherently, and much like‘Traveler’s Advisory’, the album skews from the nearly algorithmic computermusic of side one to the moving pastoral folk of the second. On the opener, ‘Reflexion’, a quartet of marimbas twist and turn over eachother, while in ‘One and All’ a harp melody is overtaken by various electroniceffects. The 12-minute title track is an abstract weaving of piano andsynthesis, with the six sections named after oceanic currents. ‘A Game of Chess, a Game of Chance’ consists of sparse electronic tonescreated on the Princeton University IBM mainframe during his studies in1976. This all makes way for the second half of ‘Undercurrents’, wheresettings of Marion Lineaweaver’s poems, ‘The Summer Girls’ and ‘Her Key isMinor’ showcase Young’s honest, fragile vocal approach, conveying a deepsense of soulful longing, and the latter even sweetly approaching somethingakin to synthpop. The piano on ‘Inflexion’ calls back to the end of ‘Reflexion’,and in the album closer, ‘Into the Woods’, Young plays the hammereddulcimer with the disciplined reverence of an alchemist. Simply put, ‘Undercurrents’ is a triumph across many musical realms… this isMatthew Young’s world.
