UNDERCURRENTS

Drag City Yoga Records are delighted
to return to the music of Matthew Young.
Following Recurring Dreams (1981,
reissued 2014) and Traveler's Advisory
(1986, reissued 2010), Undercurrents
(2025) collects eight oddly dissimilar
pieces that somehow fit together perfectly. Although unique enough to be
called outsider, Young's new album occupies a musical world accessible to fans of
many genres.
Matthew Young, born in 1950, grew
up in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. When
he showed early musical interest, his
parents bought an upright piano, and
Matthew began taking lessons. In his
teens, he attended concerts by Duke
Ellington, Dave Brubeck, and Count
Basie, and grew up to discover iconoclasts such as Eric Satie, Charles Ives,
John Cage, Harry Partch, Brian Eno,
and experimental rock groups such as
Can and Harmonia. He also regularly attended and played at folk music
gatherings in the nearby New Jersey Pine Barrens.
In the late '70s, Young took a summer seminar on computer music at
Princeton taught by Richard Cann and Michael Dellaira. Inspired, Young
bought his own EMS Synthi and Revox tape recorder and began working on
electronic music at home. His music began to appear in local theater productions, leading to the 1981 release of Recurring Dreams, through New
York distributor NMDS. The Trenton Times described the record as "an album
of liquid, effervescent keyboard tones; tingling, trembling notes; and surprising, occasionally bizarre effects." Later, Young became obsessed with
the hammered dulcimer, and in 1986 he released a new album, Traveler's
Advisory, which featured the instrument prominently, along with electronics,
tape effects, and his first foray into vocals.
Composed and recorded over the span of several decades, Undercurrents
displays the wide range of Young's various sonic pallets: similar to Recurring Dreams, the electronic landscapes meander coherently, and much like
Traveler's Advisory, the album skews from the nearly algorithmic computer
music of side one to the moving pastoral folk of the second.
On the opener "Reflexion," a quartet of marimbas twist and turn over
each other, while in "One and All," a harp melody is overtaken by various
electronic effects. The 12-minute title track is an abstract weaving of piano
and synthesis, with the six sections named after oceanic currents. "A Game
of Chess, a Game of Chance" consists of sparse electronic tones created on
the Princeton University IBM mainframe during his studies in 1976. This all
makes way for the second half of Undercurrents, where settings of Marion
Lineaweaver's poems, "The Summer Girls" and "Her Key is Minor," showcase
Young's honest, fragile vocal approach, conveying a deep sense of soulful
longing, and the latter even sweetly approaching something akin to synthpop. The piano on "Inflexion" calls back to the end of "Reflexion," and in the
album closer, "Into the Woods," Young plays the hammered dulcimer with
the disciplined reverence of an alchemist.
Simply put, Undercurrents is a triumph across many musical realms. this
is Matthew Young's world.