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Richard Youngs has been making music for over two decades. "The Naive Shaman" is his seventh album for Jagjaguwar, and is a deeply personal work. The opening track "Life On A Beam" combines a modal vocal line with throbbing sonics and non-linear percussion. Elsewhere a plaintive voice threads itself through frosted atmospherics. At the core of the album is "Sonar In My Soul", a bass loop onto which are collaged strangulated guitar, singing and more singing. The second half of the set contrasts "Once It Was Autumn", a succinctly crafted dub chant, with the epic "Summer's Edge II", whose sprawling 16 plus minutes anchor a floating vocal melody and free-flowing drums with fuzzed bass octaves. At a time when he has increased his commitment to live performance, Richard Youngs has paradoxically produced an album that explores recording technology as an instrument - a work where song is modulated by sound.