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THE UNDERGROUND YOUTH

The Underground Youth

Nostalgia's Glass

    ‘Nostalgia’s Glass’ is the eleventh studio album from cult Manchester-born, Berlin-based post-punk group The Underground Youth, due out August 18th on Fuzz Club. “Nostalgia’s Glass looks back at the music of The Underground Youth, forming new songs in a style reminiscent of the band's past”, band leader Craig Dyer writes: “The aim became to create a collection of songs that paid homage to our back catalogue and attempted to dissect not only the positive but the negative elements of nostalgia, primarily the romanticisation of the past – be it the politics of a country, the controversial legacies of film and musical icons or the sentimental idealisation of long dead toxic relationships.”

    The Underground Youth was started in 2008 as the creative project of Craig Dyer. The band – Craig now joined by Olya Dyer (Drums), Leonard Kaage (Guitar/Producer) and Samira Zahidi (Bass) – have now released 11 albums and 4 EPs over the years, developing their unique sound which has ranged from cinematic lo-fi psychedelia to a raw and noisy, albeit romantically melancholic, form of post-punk. Shrouded in a dark aesthetic and the imagery of various art film movements, The Underground Youth have established a devoted global following, continuously built upon by their extensive touring schedule through Europe, Asia and North America.

    STAFF COMMENTS

    Barry says: The brilliant Underground Youth return for an all-new LP inspired by their storied past, looking back on the highs and lows of a career that has seen them rise to one of the most beloved of the Fuzz Club roster. A wonderfully conceived, intensely satisfying whole.

    TRACK LISTING

    1) Émilie
    2) I Thought I Understood
    3) Finite As It Is
    4) Another Country
    5) Frame Of Obsession
    6) Interlude
    7) Nostalgia's Glass
    8) The Allure Of The Light
    9) Omsk Lullaby
    10) Epilogue (feat. Josef Van Wissem)

    The Underground Youth

    Beautiful & Damned - Reissue

      Fuzz Club Records are reissuing the ‘Beautiful & Damned’ EP from The Underground Youth, the Blackpool-born and now Berlin-based band led by musician, poet and author Craig Dyer. A homage to the F. Scott Fitzgerald book of the same name, the 4 track EP confirmed Dyer’s obsession for the darker side of literature and poetry of the last two centuries, as well as his early DIY approach. Rigorously recorded in the band’s home studio with the help of producer James Shillito in early 2014, ‘Beautiful & Damned’ acted as a preview to their 2015 ‘Haunted’ LP. It was the first TUY material featuring synth and electronic equipment and also represented a significant shift to a much darker sound and lyrical content, as anticipated by their first single/video ‘Naked’ – a fan-favourite to this day that exhibits a perfect encounter between the atmospheres of the Cocteau Twins and the early Creation Records sound. The 2021 reissue of the EP comes on a coloured 10” with remastered audio.

      TRACK LISTING

      1) Behind
      2) Damned
      3) Naked
      4) Shadow

      The Underground Youth

      Low Slow Needle - Reissue

        To celebrate its ten-year anniversary, Fuzz Club Records are reissuing The Underground Youth’s 2011 ‘Low Slow Needle’ EP on 10” vinyl with remastered audio. ‘Low Slow Needle’s hauntingly minimal, neo-psychedelic melancholy provides a more lo-fi snapshot of the now-Berlin-based band’s earlier days – when The Underground Youth was more of a DIY solo endeavour for Blackpool-born musician Craig Dyer, as opposed to the much-adored, full-band, international touring force that it is now. Looking back on ‘Low Slow Needle’, Dyer said: “The EP was recorded in September 2011, I had just returned to the UK from St. Petersburg where Olya [now drummer in The Underground Youth] and I had just got married.

        Olya had to stay in Russia to finalise her paperwork before we would move into our first home together in Manchester. It was a difficult time, being apart after just getting married, and so I distracted myself by working on these songs that would become the Low Slow Needle EP. It was sort of my love letter to that period, looking back and also looking to the future. I worked closely with mine and Olya's friend in St. Petersburg, Daria Xenofontova, who gave her beautiful voice to my words and featured on three of the most popular songs on the EP, 'Midnight Lust', 'Addiction' and 'Blue'. These three songs still remain popular with our fans, who still request we play them live to this day.” When compared with the cinematic folk-noir heard on the band’s tenth album, the newly-released ‘The Falling’ (2021), what we find here captures a more stark and stripped-back The Underground Youth as the project was about to come out of its embryonic phase: “All five tracks were recorded in my bedroom and I really wanted to strip back the sound, to give a romantic feel of that period for me. To consider it 10 years on, it feels like the beginning to the next step of the journey, my life in Manchester with Olya, making contact with Casper at Fuzz Club and signing up with the label (this came just after the release of Low Slow Needle) and us putting together the first incarnation of TUY's live band (again this followed the release of the EP). So, in a way, this record marked the end of the first era of The Underground Youth, and in doing so, paved the way for the next.”

        TRACK LISTING

        1) Midnight Lust
        2) On Your Screen
        3) Addiction
        4) Blue
        5) Witchcraft

        Undergound Youth

        The Falling

          The Underground Youth is a Manchester-born, Berlin-based group led by Craig Dyer that, on March 12th 2021, will release their tenth album, ‘The Falling’, via Fuzz Club Records. The new full-length sees Craig and band trade their acerbic post-punk melancholy for a more refined and stripped-back sound that, instead, enters the world of romantic, shadowy folk-noir. A marked departure from the primal intensity often heard on the band’s previous work, ‘The Falling’ showcases a softer, more cinematic musical landscape shaped by acoustic guitars, piano, accordion and a heavy presence of violin and string arrangements. It’s not just the instrumentation and atmospherics that have undergone a transformation on this record, it is also Craig’s most sincere and introspective work to date. “Lyrically this album finds me at my most honest and autobiographical. I still shroud the reality of what I have written within something of a fictional setting, but the honesty and the romance that shines throughout the record is more sincere than it has been in my previous work. The idea was to strip back the band to allow for lyrical breathing space”, Craig reflects on the album.

          With the original plans of heading into the studio upon their return from their 2020 USA tour grinding to a halt – the tour cancelled midway through due to the Covid-19 outbreak and followed by months of isolation in their Berlin apartments – the album is also very much a product of the distressing and unfamiliar world we now find ourselves in. As a result of the pandemic, ‘The Falling’ was recorded between Craig and guitarist/producer Leo Kaage’s apartments-turned-home-studios (also in the band is Craig’s wife, the artist Olya Dyer, and Max James, who formerly played in Johnny Marr’s live band): “The album sees me going back to my writing approach from our earliest records, writing the demos as stripped back acoustic tracks at home. What started out as a set of romantic and deeply personal songs also took on the surrounding frustrations and feelings towards the situation we found ourselves in. Born from the heartbreak of how the worldwide pandemic has changed the industry we were thriving within, this album also functions as a love letter to the past.”

          STAFF COMMENTS

          Barry says: The gloomy, post-punk atmospherics of Undergound Youth past is eschewed for a more subdued, Dylanny guitar and harmonica vibe. It's a testament to an act when they can shift direction quite so capably and 'The Falling' shows every bit of the skill of previous releases, but wrapped in a new skin.

          TRACK LISTING

          1) The Falling
          2) Vergiss Mich Night
          3) Egyptian Queen
          4) And I…
          5) A Sorrowful Race
          6) For You Are The One
          7) Cabinet Of Curiosities
          8) Letter From A Young Lover 

          The Underground Youth

          Montage Images Of Lust And Fear

            Berlin via Manchester outfit The Underground Youth present their ninth album, Montage Images of Lust & Fear, on Fuzz Club Records. In support of the new album, and keeping to their prodigious work ethic, the band have also announced details of a mammoth tour across the UK, Europe, Asia and Australia that’ll see them visit 25 different countries. In its rawest moments (‘The Death of the Author’, ‘Blind II’), The Underground Youth’s haunting post-punk melancholia recalls the abrasive banshee-like noise of The Birthday Party and Suicide; jagged, shrieking guitars twist and turn as Craig Dyer’s dour vocals jerk from morose and impassioned to macabre screams.

            Though this is an album of two sides; the more intense and challenging songs punctuated by heartfelt and solemn ballads (‘Too Innocent To Be True’, ‘This Anaesthetised World’) that are aided by the additional lap steel guitar of Kristof Hahn (Swans) who plays on six of the album’s nine songs. This is The Underground Youth’s most intense and honest record yet - in the ambitious songwriting and live recording (a first for the band), as well as the lyrical subject matter. Talking about the album, Craig explains “Montage Images of Lust & Fear is inspired by the succession of experiences we are increasingly dealt by the media. Sex, violence, love, suspicion, desire, distress, etc.

            The album acts as a montage itself, the subject of each song dealing with an aspect of either lust or fear. Like flicking through the channels on a television. Until the end you are overcome by white noise. Static.” Since the release of their aptly-titled eighth full-length, What Kind Of Dystopian Hellhole Is This?, in February 2017, the band have set out on four UK/European tours clocking in at over 100 shows (not including stand-alone gigs). If all that time touring has taught the band anything, it’s how to work together as a collective and Montage Images Of Lust & Fear is all the better for it - the first The Underground Youth record with all the band members involved in the writing. “Unlike previous albums in which I’ve written the tracks and taken them into the studio to record with or without the band, this record is the product of us all working on the music and arranging the songs together,” Craig explains: “We recorded the album live with the four of us playing in the same small room and with our guitarist Leo as producer, running back and forth from the mixing desk to the live room. As a result, the recording perfectly captures the raw intensity of our live performance, something we’ve never done before.

            TRACK LISTING

            1. Sins
            2. Last Exit To Nowhere
            3. The Death Of The Author
            4. This Is But A Dream
            5. Too Innocent To Be True
            6. Blind
            7. Blind II
            8. I Can't Resist
            9. This Anaesthetised 

            Manchester's The Underground Youth is here with with yet another hauntingly beautiful record that blends shoegaze, post-punk and psychedelia. TUY is the name under which Manchester’s underground poet, Craig Dyer, has produced his records since 2009. In 2011, Fuzz Club Records started putting out his prolific catalogue, bringing to light a number of LPs and singles that had only circulated virally on the Internet. Since then, TUY, with Craig and Olya Dyer as the core of the band, have expanded to a five piece, gaining a solid international fan-base and touring all around the UK and Europe.

            Drowned In Sound said of their Eindhoven set: “combining the mesmeric rhythms of The Velvet Underground - Olya Dyer's driving beats make her the new psych generation's Mo Tucker - with rippling feedback associated with Bad Moon Risingera Sonic Youth and a dash of the Mary Chain thrown in as well, they're a captivating force”. 

            STAFF COMMENTS

            Barry says: Manchester's Underground Youth return with another slice of post-everything psych-rock-tronica. Combining beautiful guitar melodies and repeated vocal refrains with overwhelming pastoral electronic washes, this is a collection founded on indie pioneers past, but expanded upon to the Nth degree and updated. 'Drown In Me' is a particularly accomplished slice of synth-heavy industrial sadness, interspersed with bursts of cautiously optimistic shoegaze-y guitars. Nothing too sunny about this, but it's nice to wallow in the bleakness of life sometimes, and there really is no better way to do it. A soundtrack to industrial ruins, and rainy evenings. Highly recommended.

            TRACK LISTING

            1. Collapsing Into Night
            2. Haunted
            3. Dreaming With Maya Deren
            4. Self Inflicted
            5. Drown In Me
            6. The Girl Behind
            7. Slave
            8. Deep Inside Of Me
            9. Returning To Shadow


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