- Luke Younger steps into the light on his brightest, most melodic and, well, best record yet.
- Luke Younger cut his teeth as a noise artist before a burgeoning interest in sound design led him to more loosely defined exercises in ambient and drone. Up until 2006, when Younger enrolled in a Sonic Arts degree at Middlesex University—a course recommended by close friend Lee Gamble, with whom he'd later share a roster on PAN—he toured regularly in the extreme music duo Birds Of Delay with Steven Warwick. The band recorded for experimental labels like Not Not Fun and American Tapes, borrowing heavily from the pulverizing musical heritage of '90s power electronics outfits as well as the opaque experiments of musique concrète pioneers like Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry.
The physicality of these noisy, sample-based compositions lingered in the foundation of Younger's later work in more subdued styles, navigating the territory between balmy ambient and loop-based industrial music. Percussion crashes and clatters, feral rhythms lumber and sashay, synth lines bend with a bottom-heavy gravitational pull. Axis—his debut on New York label Dais Records, and his strongest solo release to date—is forged from field recordings Younger captured in his immediate environment ("I don't know how many more times I can record my bathroom," he once quipped to Resident Advisor) as well as cello, vocals and guitar. They conjure a warped world that is both obviously manipulated and uncannily familiar.
Sounds tiptoe along the knife-edge of recognizability on "Mole," contrasting the organic scrape of found sound and strings with splinters of alien synth. The track seems designed to confuse: one synth line gyrates in a wild frenzy like a sped-up cassette tape, while another bleeps with the screeching static of a dial-up connection booting to life and a third joins an aqueous pitter-patter with the pulsating warble of a submarine-like sonar. Everything sounds like something else, but also like nothing in particular.
Heavy-stepper "Moskito" is the best example of Younger's suggestive sound design. The Regis-like dirge calls to mind the clangorous thud of machinery, its off-kilter kick looping slowly over the soft clang of metal like revolving cogwheels locking into place.
On Axis, Younger crafts accessible, cinematic and thoughtfully structured pieces that remain musical in spite of their visceral—and sometimes discomfiting—production style. While some of the LP, like the title track, veers towards abstract sound study, some moments offset this impressionism with melodic hooks fit for a big-picture film score. Closer "Towers," for example, crescendos with a wall of resonant sound. Its magnetic center is a repeated four-note refrain that opens and closes over a klaxon of strings and distorted synths.
"My music isn't hopeful, but it offers a glimmer of hope in the wreckage," Younger told Truants in 2019. While most of his music leans heavily into his obvious affinity for doomy electronic soundscapes, this most recent release is a step towards the light—the apotheosis of his work with audio manipulation and stunning sample-based collage.
Tracklist01. Para
02. Moskito
03. Crash
04. Repellent
05. Mole
06. Axis
07. Tower