“…Young has quite a unique synth sound. The record is split into fourteen short bursts of analogue reductions. Each track is roughly three minutes in length, meaning that intensity throughout is at heightened levels…”
(October 2010) Minimal synth is a sound that can sometime shroud its complexity. Beneath the veneer of simplicity can lie a myriad of wires, knobs, buttons, faders on an array of technical equipment. Then there are artists who create minimal synth with a minimal amount of instruments. Between 1980/81 Roy Young (an alias) entered a small Suffolk studio with only a synthesizer and a drum kit. Transparent Illusion was the product of these sessions. The LP that arrived, ‘Still Human’, was released on Young’s own label Vex Records. After the ’81 album, and a 7″, Transparent Illusion, and his record label, vanished into the annals of electronic obscurity. A shoddy bootleg saw the light of wax a few years back, but now Anna Logue Records have tracked down the illusive Transparent Illusion to give Still Human a deserved official rebirth.
Young has quite a unique synth sound. The record is split into fourteen short bursts of analogue reductions. Each track is roughly three minutes in length, meaning that intensity throughout is at heightened levels. The LP opens with the early synthesizer sounds of “Sections.” The instrumental piece has a simple bricolage synth quality to it, uplifting and warm. Young’s vocals arrive for “Incubus,” a slow cold wave work of electronics. The record shifts from sombre to upbeat, but an isolation runs throughout. Analogue drives and simple beats are the foundation of the album. Distortion lies alongside melody, like in the brief “Age of Ridicule.” Melancholy is the inescapable theme of the LP, mirrored in synth and vocals as in the aching “Demented.” The b-side opens with the title piece, “The Human Cage (Still Human.)” An uncertainty in the human condition resonates, economic coldness and social apathy caught inside a synth line. Tracks like “I Dream I’m You” tell a similar tale, an escape from the constraints of a closed life. Anna Logue have added a couple of other delights to the album. The last two tracks are 1980 demo versions. First up is “Concepts,” with broad bars and distant lyrics to leave a cold taste in your speakers. The ultimate piece is “Vortex,” the original being a few tracks back. This synth heavy version is interesting in comparison to what the track would be, with the vocals lost here in a uncertain inner ear.
The term minimal synth can be a bit of a misnomer; the sound may be a stripped back affair but it misses out on some of the underlying power of the isolated chords. In 1981 Robert Young went into a Suffolk studio. He made a minimal synth record. But the context and the emotion of this terse synth sound is still as striking today as it ever has been. I’m not sure how the Anna Logue team are managing to find this lost magic, but please keep doing it.
Still Human is out now on Anna Logue.
