Warehouse find of the last ever original unplayed copies of this landmark double LP from the duo of Richard Youngs and Simon Wickham-Smith self-released in 1990. Coming out of an adolescence steeped in Industrial and experimental music, this was the duo’s first privately pressed album and it still stands as one of the key UK underground LPs. It was Lake that first brought them to the attention of Jimmy Johnson at Forced Exposure, specifically the wild early version of “Goat”. Extremely rare, never reissued on vinyl. A unique opportunity to score one of the rarest private press UK underground albums. 

Limited edition 7” from Dull Knife as part of their new singer-songwriter series. Each 7 comes in a hard card sleeve with an option of three different photographic sleeves. Richard sings and plays acoustic and electric guitar, electric bass and synthesizer. This is one of his wildest outings of late, with a fuzzy-caked psych rocker topped off with screaming distortion and an ultra-distorted vocal that relocates his cantorial style somewhere downwind of William Bennett. Flip has a distorted spoken word piece that has a nice, haunted atmosphere. Hand-numbered edition of 300 copies.

A while back we asked Richard Youngs to record an album especially for Volcanic Tongue, bearing in mind VT’s nebulous but still somehow specific musical aesthetic. We didn’t hear anything for a while, until one day Richard turned up at VT HQ with a CD-R in his hand. I’ve recorded the perfect VT album, he said. We took it home and it damn near took our head off. He was right: Inceptor is the perfect Youngs album for VT. Imagine Richard’s feel for soaring Celtic melodies and spontaneous composition married to PSF-style guitar excess and you’re close to Inceptor’s brain-razzing appeal. Indeed, if Youngs hadda cut an album for PSF Inceptor would undoubtedly be it. Scored for vocals and overdriven electric guitar, Youngs tears raging, iconoclastic solos from the guitar, peaking in glorious folk melodies and clouds of thick overtone that at points sounds like a fleet of Aylerised berserkers playing bagpipes. He sings over the top in a style that reconciles the wordless chants of “Goat”-era Youngs/Wickham-Smith with the electric Albion stylings of his Jagjaguwar recordings. Possibly the wildest and most euphorically beautiful album of Richard’s career, Inceptor is a dazzling slab of peaking psychedelic rock and soaring folk-simple melodies. The LP comes in an edition of only 300 copies, with stunning individually silkscreened sleeves from Alan Sherry of Siwa and packaged in high quality Japanese plastic sleeves. Pretty much your dream Richard Youngs release. Highest possible recommendation!

Every new Richard Youngs LP is in some way an event – his modus is so restless and yet his muse remains so distinctively personal that it’s always a thrill to see where he’s gonna dive in next. Amaranthine puts his vocals way up front for a series of four ecstatic bardic/future folk classics that ride in on wave after staggering wave of free form percussion, clanging household objects, shakuhachi and fuzz guitar. The vocals fall into the classic post-Summer Wanderer style of endlessly repeating, lilting phrases, here with a cracked use of F/X that smears them even further. At points he overdubs two vocals on soaring alternative trajectories, each rising like the mirror image of the last while shakers and liberated drum orchestras push the whole deal to new ritualistic peaks. Indeed, at points it almost feels like the closest Richard has come to cutting a devotional free jazz album, with almost AACM style rhythms and at points the kind of furiously beautiful combination of breathwork, vocalese and liberated percussion that lit up private press classic like Frank Lowe and Rashied Ali’s Duo Exchange. In many ways this feels like the ultimate ‘free folk’ album of Richard’s career, fully realising his vision of beautiful, hymnal Church Of England hypnotics over collapsing arrangements of percussion, fuzz, drone and breath. And those vocals! Simply put, a classic Richard Youngs LP that pretty much delivers on everything that made you fall in love with his music in the first place. Edition of 500 copies, highly recommended!

Another major LP release from Richard Youngs, this time out with a series of vocal-led songs that take off on a blueprint of minimal, repetitive electro-metal with an insane bass-heavy bottom end. Some fantastic song-writing here, with Richard riding peak-after-peak of ascending, triumphal melodies while pugilistic drum machine lands doomy retorts and the massive bass stalks the shadow of the songs. “We Are The Messengers” is an instant classic, a mantric devotional/folk piece that works a circular vocal into a stirring lament while “Forever Hills Of Everyday” pushes the remit even further with fast, almost breakbeats pushing stationary bass shapes and wild, roaming fuzz guitar solos into the arc of single, soaring vocal lines. Hard to fully capture the odd, synthesised hard rock/progressive feel of the music but the pull between the electro/metal stylings and Richard’s obsessive and beautifully unadorned vocals makes for a truly magical side that once more sounds somehow completely singular and yet instantly recognisable. Edition of 500 copies. Highly recommended!