The jazz clarinettist turned club kid was once forgotten. But two reissues of classic albums from the 1970s may change that
In 1980, Roland Young, a classically trained jazz clarinettist, was living in an apartment in Manhattan's Kips Bay and making music in the studio he'd built in his bedroom, "so I could eat, take a shower, take a nap, wake up and go right into the studio, you know?" He adds: "Then go out and party all night."
Young is now 71 and living in Tel Aviv, but those years in New York have just been refreshed for him. Three decades on, the criminally overlooked music he made in that bedroom has been released as a record called Hearsay I-Land, and it's a fine reissue.
"There was a lot of cross-pollination of sounds happening," he says, recalling a decade filled with some of the greatest electronic music the city has ever played host to. "And that's what I'd really been about anyway, mixing various sounds together and coming up with another kind of sound in itself."
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen to Ballo-Balla
Before moving to New York in 1980, Young lived in San Francisco, where he hosted a show on the FM radio station KSAN on which he'd try out these new sounds. On his website, he describes this endeavour in typically expansive terms: "Africa, Asia, Europe and native America became the source material, space and silence became the structure, and composing, improvising and the continued development of instrumental facility became the tasks."
Young's passions ran to the charmingly arcane. He nurtured a particular interest, for example, in the correlation between the tonalities of pygmy singing and those of 1960s and 70s avant garde jazz. But Young was also a club kid, an enthusiastic dancer who took his own records along on nights out to try to persuade DJs to play them. He wouldn't likely see a division between these two sensibilities – the tirelessly experimental on the one hand, and the beat-happy, groove-seeking on the other – but when he brought them together in two records, 1984's I-Land and 1987's Hearsay Evidence, it seems like the world wasn't quite ready for it.
"People didn't quite know what to think," he says, "because it wasn't new wave, it wasn't disco, it wasn't ska. And it had a sparseness about it that I don't think they'd quite heard at that time."
And did anyone give him a hard time for making music that wasn't jazz?
"Yeah, some of the avant garde purists did," he says. "They hated my Isophonic Boogie Woogie: they didn't like the cover, they didn't like my use of electronics, they didn't like anything."
But he was pissing off the right people? "Exactly," he says, laughing. "I kind of felt like if certain people didn't like what you were doing then you were on the right track."
He adds: "There's that saying, 'no man is an island', but I always felt like a complete island unto myself. So that was really what that name I-Land was all about."
In other words, Young never really expected anyone else to care – particularly not decades later. But, in 2007, a Brooklyn DJ called Jacob Gorchov came across a copy of 1987's Hearsay Evidence in a bargain bin at a record store. He bought it on a whim and was so excited by what he heard that he tracked down Young.
"It's quite amazing that [Hearsay Evidence] connected with another generation," Young says. "That's the way it is, you know? Things skip over a generation, every other generation relates to itself."
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen to Don't Ever Take Your Love Away
He and Gorchov took the best of Hearsay Evidence and the best of I-Land, and the result is Hearsay I-Land, which Gorchov put out on his own label, Palto Flats (it has just been released in the UK on Honest Jon's Records).
So far, the reaction has delighted Young. "People who like my other music also like this, and that's what I'm most happy about – that it's not a compartmentalised thing, you know? They can accept it as part of a whole being. If it is insanity on my part," he says happily, "then at least I have some brothers and sisters who are with me."
The songs are sleazy and innocent, often at the same time. Don't Ever Take Your Love Away is a dub-inflected ballad on which Young's high, lean voice is particularly melancholy, but the oddest and sweetest track is the stealth-groove of Ballo Balla. Featuring vocals from his wife, Risa, it sounds very young, almost adolescent, particularly on the push-pull, spoken chorus of Ballo-Balla. There's a sincerity and simplicity to it that can't only be explained by the basic production.
"It's about dancing," he says. "We met at an after-hours club on the dance floor. So dance is a very integral part of our relationship. She was dancing by herself and I was watching her, and she just pushed the guys all off and looked at me and shrugged her shoulders, and I got the message. So we fell in love. The thing I fell in love with – it was four in the morning and I asked her what she wanted to drink and she said 'orange juice'. I said this was the cutest girl that I was looking for."
All of Hearsay I-Land was recorded in that bedroom decades ago in Kips Bay, making every track a kind of sonic postcard from his own past. "When I hear them," says Young, "it's like I'm hearing them for the first time, every time." Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.
In 1980, Roland Young, a classically trained jazz clarinettist, was living in an apartment in Manhattan's Kips Bay and making music in the studio he'd built in his bedroom, "so I could eat, take a shower, take a nap, wake up and go right into the studio, you know?" He adds: "Then go out and party all night."
Young is now 71 and living in Tel Aviv, but those years in New York have just been refreshed for him. Three decades on, the criminally overlooked music he made in that bedroom has been released as a record called Hearsay I-Land, and it's a fine reissue.
"There was a lot of cross-pollination of sounds happening," he says, recalling a decade filled with some of the greatest electronic music the city has ever played host to. "And that's what I'd really been about anyway, mixing various sounds together and coming up with another kind of sound in itself."
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen to Ballo-Balla
Before moving to New York in 1980, Young lived in San Francisco, where he hosted a show on the FM radio station KSAN on which he'd try out these new sounds. On his website, he describes this endeavour in typically expansive terms: "Africa, Asia, Europe and native America became the source material, space and silence became the structure, and composing, improvising and the continued development of instrumental facility became the tasks."
Young's passions ran to the charmingly arcane. He nurtured a particular interest, for example, in the correlation between the tonalities of pygmy singing and those of 1960s and 70s avant garde jazz. But Young was also a club kid, an enthusiastic dancer who took his own records along on nights out to try to persuade DJs to play them. He wouldn't likely see a division between these two sensibilities – the tirelessly experimental on the one hand, and the beat-happy, groove-seeking on the other – but when he brought them together in two records, 1984's I-Land and 1987's Hearsay Evidence, it seems like the world wasn't quite ready for it.
"People didn't quite know what to think," he says, "because it wasn't new wave, it wasn't disco, it wasn't ska. And it had a sparseness about it that I don't think they'd quite heard at that time."
And did anyone give him a hard time for making music that wasn't jazz?
"Yeah, some of the avant garde purists did," he says. "They hated my Isophonic Boogie Woogie: they didn't like the cover, they didn't like my use of electronics, they didn't like anything."
But he was pissing off the right people? "Exactly," he says, laughing. "I kind of felt like if certain people didn't like what you were doing then you were on the right track."
He adds: "There's that saying, 'no man is an island', but I always felt like a complete island unto myself. So that was really what that name I-Land was all about."
In other words, Young never really expected anyone else to care – particularly not decades later. But, in 2007, a Brooklyn DJ called Jacob Gorchov came across a copy of 1987's Hearsay Evidence in a bargain bin at a record store. He bought it on a whim and was so excited by what he heard that he tracked down Young.
"It's quite amazing that [Hearsay Evidence] connected with another generation," Young says. "That's the way it is, you know? Things skip over a generation, every other generation relates to itself."
Reading on mobile? Click here to listen to Don't Ever Take Your Love Away
He and Gorchov took the best of Hearsay Evidence and the best of I-Land, and the result is Hearsay I-Land, which Gorchov put out on his own label, Palto Flats (it has just been released in the UK on Honest Jon's Records).
So far, the reaction has delighted Young. "People who like my other music also like this, and that's what I'm most happy about – that it's not a compartmentalised thing, you know? They can accept it as part of a whole being. If it is insanity on my part," he says happily, "then at least I have some brothers and sisters who are with me."
The songs are sleazy and innocent, often at the same time. Don't Ever Take Your Love Away is a dub-inflected ballad on which Young's high, lean voice is particularly melancholy, but the oddest and sweetest track is the stealth-groove of Ballo Balla. Featuring vocals from his wife, Risa, it sounds very young, almost adolescent, particularly on the push-pull, spoken chorus of Ballo-Balla. There's a sincerity and simplicity to it that can't only be explained by the basic production.
"It's about dancing," he says. "We met at an after-hours club on the dance floor. So dance is a very integral part of our relationship. She was dancing by herself and I was watching her, and she just pushed the guys all off and looked at me and shrugged her shoulders, and I got the message. So we fell in love. The thing I fell in love with – it was four in the morning and I asked her what she wanted to drink and she said 'orange juice'. I said this was the cutest girl that I was looking for."
All of Hearsay I-Land was recorded in that bedroom decades ago in Kips Bay, making every track a kind of sonic postcard from his own past. "When I hear them," says Young, "it's like I'm hearing them for the first time, every time." Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.