As the current millennium came into its own, the sonic sub-underground birthed a plethora of micro-sized labels focused on the once-maligned cassette tape. Stunned, NNA, 905 Tapes, along with many other imprints, created their own unique mythoi and artistic sensibilities based around spools of magnetically coated plastic. It was in this flourishing era that UK resident David McNamee started Blue Tapes. Launching with a cassette from Toronto-based musician Matt Collins (Ninja High School), the label quickly established a singular visual aesthetic based on McNamee’s own hand-crafted art. Since then, the label’s roster has diversified wildly, featuring artists as varied as Tashi Dorji, Katie Gately, Ratkiller, and Trupa Trupa. Carefully assembled by hand, each Blue Tapes release is an object of beauty, both sonically and visually.
The 39th entry in the Blue Tapes canon features perhaps the label’s most high-profile artist. Richard Youngs barely needs an introduction to Dusted readers, having been active in the UK music scene since the 1980s and producing some of the most striking outsider folk and rock albums in the modern singer-songwriter vein. His signature yowl, which exists somewhere on the spectrum between Nick Drake and Robert Wyatt, is instantly recognizable. While most listeners associate Youngs with guitars and verses, there is much more on offer. His oeuvre covers a lot of territory as he often strays from traditional songcraft, venturing out into more challenging terrain. Some of his music is downright noisy. He is such a prolific and eclectic artist that many music writers have quipped that no Richard Youngs album sounds like another, but they all sound like Richard Youngs albums.
Blue Thirty-Nine is one of Young’s conceptual song cycles, where he establishes a mode of operating and creates profoundly elemental works of art. In this case, he utilizes a seven-string guitar laced with nylon strings, his voice, and a tape machine. Through the magic of tape, he dissolves his own voice, layering the foundational resonances and articulations to create symphonies of mouth sounds. If this comes across as downright strange, it is at first. Then, the buzzes, hums, ahs and ohs coalesce into a language of their own, a series of incantations that exist at the intersection of minimalism and tone poetry.
Youngs accompanies these verbal sound clouds with delicately plucked and strummed guitar. The nylon strings don’t have the brashness of their steel counterparts, which softens the attack and lends a sense of intimacy to the songs. Each of the four extended pieces plays with the established conceptual framework in its own way. “Sudden Thoughts on Slow Insurrection” and “Moon Thing” are sprightly folk ditties, each with its own idiosyncratic attitude. The other two pieces are syncopated and strange, but deciphering their unique lexicon is a worthy exercise. Once again, Youngs has managed to create an album that stands apart from most of what he’s done before, but Blue Thirty-Nine is undoubtedly a Richard Youngs record.
