RICHARD YOUNGS / ALEX NEILSON - Road Is Open Life

Richard Youngs – by now a genuine guarantee of quality in that no man's land straddling rock, improvised music and the avant-garde – is a tireless workhorse who keeps people talking about him and the countless (and often excellent) records bearing his name. With the less well-known Alex Neilson, a drummer and percussionist, he shares a track record of onstage support work for the American small-town (though in this case "metropolitan" would be decidedly out of place) legend who goes by the name of Jandek, the bizarre singer-songwriter who, after decades of communicative autism and artistic misanthropy, has finally decided to start performing live.

Just to be clear, this collaboration has very little to do with that backing role of theirs; it's instead a work that oozes passion and fascination for musical currents that are even rather unfashionable, such as kraut or the most experimental strains of psychedelia, while also being (very) skilfully tinged with that free, almost shamanic approach typical of a certain strain of weird-rock that's quite in vogue today.

Five lengthy tracks, starting with the ritual built on the reiterations of "New Moon Alone", moving through the laments of "Pictures For The Multitudes" over a backdrop of screeches and jingles, through "Prime Thunder", which holds within itself both the fury of the storm and the calm of its fade-out, through the obsessive, pulsing "Titus Salt", and closing with the out-of-control guitar solo of "Caol Pearl".

Nothing less than yet another spot-on move from Richard Youngs.

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03/04/2007