Youngs, Richard And Simon Wickham-smith

20 Years

Vhf

LP+3XCD $29.00

07/20/2010 783881010916

VHF 109 LP

MP3 $24.99

07/20/2010 783881010916

20 Years celebrates two decades of music from Richard Youngs and Simon Wickham-Smith, featuring four previously unreleased albums. The set includes the first new vinyl from the pair in almost 15 years, plus three other projects (presented here on CD) that were all completed and intended for release by the duo in the '90s, but fell by the wayside for various reasons.
20 Years, the newly recorded LP, is one of the heaviest, most uncompromising records of the duo's long career. It consists of eight electro-acoustic reworkings of their first (unreleased) recording from 1987, and is a blistering set of tracks as wild and weird as anything they've ever done. The SMIRR CD features four epic instrumentals in the vein of classics such as LAKE and Asthma and Diabetes, flowing with extended grandeur, mixing drone and eccentric instrumentation in the duo's immediately identifiable style. Songphase's ten simple, lovely tunes are a reminder of their considerable "trad" songwriting and performing prowess. While Youngs has worked in this style on his solo efforts, hearing Wickham-Smith match him track for track is a revelation. "Dream Song" is among the former's most moving pieces. Finally, LIVE!!! is a head-scratcher of an album, recorded live in-studio in full-on Dadaist style--extended clavinet mania, Casio jams and plenty of outre expression.
This set is packaged in a gatefold jacket with essays by David Keenan, Neil Campbell, Marc Masters and Jon Dale and an extended interview with Youngs and Wickham-Smith. The CDs are housed in a custom-bindered insert in the pocket opposite the LP, with each disc held snug in its own die-cut pocket, and the audiophile-quality LP was cut by John Golden.

"Magnificent and ridiculous." --Neil Campbell
"In its own way, 20 Years is a testament to another form of resistance, one that is polite, well-behaved, English-eccentric but still as bloody-minded, anti-corporate and determinedly individual as the most radical punk rock." --David Keenan
"Call 20 Years a film shot on wax, a book printed on plastic, an uncontainable career folded inside a hairless gate. I think you better turn off your cell-phone-addled brain and clamp your fists to your chair for this one." --Marc Masters