Rob Young
Rob Young was born in Bristol in 1968. He has worked as a music writer and editor since 1993, when he joined the staff of The Wire. His books include All Gates Open: The Story of Can (Faber & Faber, 2018), Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music (Faber & Faber, 2010), and histories of Rough Trade and Warp in Black Dog Publishing's Labels Unlimited series. He edited the collections of Wire articles, Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring of Modern Music (Continuum 2002), The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music (Verso 2009), and No Regrets: Writings On Scott Walker (Orion 2012).
Rob has contributed to many publications including Uncut, Sight & Sound, The Guardian, Frieze, Artforum, Art Review, LRB and the New Statesman, as well as art catalogues on Jeremy Deller, Pink Floyd, Carsten Nicolai and Seb Patane. He currently lives in Oslo, Norway.
71 articles
List of articles in the library
Book Excerpt by Rob Young, 'Electric Eden' (Faber), August 2010
NOTE: This is an excerpt from Rob Young's superb new folk opus Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music, published in August 2010 by Faber & ...
Mark Hollis, Talk Talk: Return from Eden: Mark Hollis
Profile and Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, January 1998
As the prime mover behind Talk Talk, Mark Hollis threw off the shackles of a pop existence to create the bleakest, yet most lyrical orchestral ...
Press Release by Rob Young, 4AD Records, September 2012
Bish (n. sl.), bitchBosch, Hieronymous (c. 1450–1516), Dutch painterBish bosh (sl.), job done, sorted* ...
Sun Ra: Cosmic Relief: Sun Ra & His Solar Arkestra: The Magic Sun
Film/DVD/TV Review by Rob Young, Uncut, April 2005
Important documentary artefact of late-'60s avant-garde jazz ...
Jonny Greenwood, Radiohead: Jonny Greenwood: "What do I do? I just generally worry about things…"
Report and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, April 2011
THE CAR PULLS into the courtyard of a small complex E of offices in the middle of a housing estate on the fringes of Didcot, ...
LCD Soundsystem: Liquid ecstasy: LCD Soundsystem: LCD Soundsystem (DFA/EMI) *****
Review and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, February 2005
New York's disco infiltrators put the "cross" in crossover ...
Fleet Foxes: Pack Mentality: Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues (Bella Union)
Review by Rob Young, The Word, May 2011
Fleet Foxes return, warmer and more bracing, with a set of vivid utopian folk songs for an age of modern austerity ...
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, July 2005
Digital avant funk sound boffin and flamboyant vocalist by turns, Jamie Lidell's live appearances are spectacular feats of improvised technology and showmanship. On the release ...
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, September 1998
As one of the few drum 'n' bass starfighters still standing, is it too late for the lone Grooverider to save Jungle from burning out? ...
Portishead: Tangled Up In Blue
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, December 1998
After three albums and a world tour which nearly put paid to them, the members of Portishead are resting up. In Bristol, Geoff Barrow and ...
John Martyn: Felling Gravity's Pull
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, June 1998
After rising to prominence with the late 60s electric folk renaissance, John Martyn uprooted songform and subjected it to a serious sonic makeover on a ...
Boards Of Canada: Protect and Survive
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, October 2005
In a rare face to face interview at their Scottish retreat, Boards Of Canada break their self-imposed isolation to scotch the myths that have coalesced ...
Book Review by Rob Young, The Wire, July 2005
PRACTICALLY EVERY city in Britain has a roster of musical hod carriers with appalling names. This exhaustive history of Sheffield's music scene is crammed with ...
Review by Rob Young, The Word, July 2011
After the world's greatest break-up album, Bon Iver has pulled himself out of the quagmire of regret — with invigorating results. ...
Sandy Denny, The Strawbs: Sandy Denny & The Strawbs: All Our Own Work
Review and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, August 2010
Early recordings of English folk's finest voice, definitively remastered. ...
The Edgar Broughton Band: The Harvest Years 1969-1973
Review and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, February 2011
Out, hippies, out! Four CD set captures the righteous, blues-rocking anger of Warwickshire's counterculture warriors. ...
Bill Fay: Tomorrow Never Knows
Retrospective and Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, March 2005
AFTER MAKING TWO OF THE FINEST BUT OVERLOOKED APOCALYPTIC SINGER-SONGWRITER ALBUMS OF THE EARLY 70S — WITH JAZZ ARRANGER MIKE GIBBS AND FREE GUITARIST RAY ...
Konono No. 1: Konono No 1: Congotronics
Review by Rob Young, The Wire, March 2005
IN AFRICA, corrupt and irresponsible governance has led some of the continent's most prominent modern musicians to cast themselves as surrogate leader figures — think ...
Book Excerpt by Rob Young, 'All Gates Open: The Story of Can' (Faber), May 2018
ONE OF THE many resonances of Can's name is the canister housing reels of celluloid film, a precious container protecting that most flammable and crumply ...
Mickey Newbury: American Trilogy (Saint Cecilia Knows/Mountain Retreat)
Review by Rob Young, The Word, May 2011
Mickey Newbury's songs were made famous by other people. In his own hands they reveal a strange and magical thumbprint. ...
Traffic: John Barleycorn Must Die (Deluxe Edition)
Review by Rob Young, Uncut, April 2011
Winwood and pals' pastoral funk apogee, remastered. ...
Review and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, February 2007
4CD Connoisseur Collection Of Rare Mercurial Magic From British Folk/Blues/Jazz Supergroup. ...
Live Review by Rob Young, The Wire, March 2000
ZORN'S BACK: that part of his anatomy, clad in a casual red pullover above yellow-flecked combat slacks, is, in fact, what is presented to the ...
Book Review by Rob Young, The Word, June 2011
AROUND 15 MAY 1970, Neil Young glanced at Time magazine's coverage of the killing of four students at Kent State, grabbed a guitar and within ...
Dean Roberts: Lost City Rambler
Profile and Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, April 2004
"I LIKE TO get songs to find their place in the air and sort of float there," says Dean Roberts, who began his career in ...
Six Organs Of Admittance: Shelter From The Ash
Review by Rob Young, Uncut, December 2007
OVERUSED PHRASES such as "freak folk" or "acid folk" tend to play up the potential gonzo overtones of America's current underground scene. ...
Davey Graham: Davy Graham: A Scholar And A Gentleman
Review by Rob Young, Uncut, January 2010
Perfectly tuned survey of the dad of DADGAD's musical wanderings. ...
First Aid Kit: The Lion's Roar
Review by Rob Young, The Word, February 2012
Gorgeous close-harmony singing and undiluted Americana —from the wide-open prairies of Stockholm ...
Profile and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, April 2010
The return of a remarkable English visionary. ...
PJ Harvey, John Parish: PJ Harvey & John Parish: A Woman A Man Walked By
Review by Rob Young, Uncut, April 2009
Grunge! Banjo! Dub! Swearing! Old friends play at musical double-dare, says Rob Young. ...
Review and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, October 2008
Outtakes and unreleased live recordings shine new light on the angels and demons at war in a 40-year career. ...
Review by Rob Young, Uncut, February 2010
The Dame's debut: an enduringly curious dispatch from "Gnome-man's land", expanded and remastered. ...
Fairport Convention: Come all ye rolling minstrels
Retrospective and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, September 2007
They were a bunch of uptight Londoners who wanted to be the Byrds. But after a tragic road crash, Fairport Convention holed up in the ...
Shirley & Dolly Collins: The Harvest Years
Review and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, September 2008
Remastered recordings dust off the crowning glories of English folk's Indian summer. ...
The Incredible String Band: Reissues
Review by Rob Young, Uncut, April 2010
Scottish psych-folkies seek (and find) enlightenment. Praise be, says Rob Young. ...
Live Review by Rob Young, The Wire, September 1997
AH, A DUMBSHOW — now that's entertainment. In the middle of the floor in the largest of the Ministry Of Sound's three shapeless spaces, the ...
Can: Ulrich Adelt: Krautrock: German Music In The Seventies (University of Michigan Press)
Book Review by Rob Young, The Wire, April 2017
AS ULRICH ADELT points out in his introduction to this sweeping survey of German music, there have been relatively few books on krautrock, even fewer ...
Review by Rob Young, The Word, October 2011
Those in search of rapturous folk meditations with all the urgency of the '60s revivalists... tune in to Meg Baird. ...
Laurie Anderson: Epiphanies: Laurie Anderson
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, May 2000
Laurie Anderson tells Rob Young how a great white whale lured her towards her latest revelations ...
wire200.net/minehost: Brainwashed.com
Profile and Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, October 2000
Webmaster Jon Whitney controls Brainwashed.com, a central hub for music's outsider tendency, hosting sites for World Serpent, Tortoise, Kid606 and more. ...
Guide by Rob Young, Uncut, May 2008
OF ALL THE British folk groups of the late '60s, Pentangle were the most commercially successful. Where Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span chose a more ...
Matthew Herbert: The Body Politician
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, May 2003
If electronica constructed entirely from sampled body parts, stacked recordings of falling telephone directories or the noise of domestic appliances hasn't already established that utopian ...
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, March 1996
Depending on your point of view, American group Tortoise are either cutting edge avant rock, or ponderous Prog revivalists. Either way, the buzz generated by ...
George Russell: The Complete Remastered Recordings On Black Saint & Soul Note
Review by Rob Young, The Wire, May 2011
THE LYDIAN Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organisation is seldom invoked these days, but jazz composer George Russell's theoretical attempt to lift jazz up and away ...
Neneh Cherry: Blank Project (Smalltown Supersound)
Review by Rob Young, The Wire, February 2014
NENEH CHERRY's re-emergence as a solo artist has been a long, gradual process. ...
Frank Black: Frank Black (4AD CAD 3004 CD/MC/LP)
Review by Rob Young, The Wire, April 1993
PUNCH ME out if I mention The Pixies more than twice. Times have changed and Black Francis wants us to call him Frank Black. This ...
The Incredible String Band: Tricks of the Senses
Review by Rob Young, Uncut, February 2009
Two CDs of lost sounds from the Scottish folk starsailors. ...
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, June 2000
Pole music combines glitch electronics with the cyclonic eddies of dub. In London, Rob Young meets its creator, Stefan Betke, to uncover a secret life ...
Add N to (X): Invisible Jukebox: Add N to (X)
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, November 2000
Every month we play a musician or group a series of records which they're asked to identify and comment on — with no prior knowledge ...
Retrospective by Rob Young, Uncut, October 2010
When Sandy Denny left Fairport Convention at the height of their success, she seemed destined for solo stardom. What went wrong? With the help of ...
Sigur Rós: Desolation Angels: Icelandic music
Report and Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, January 2001
Spearheaded by Sigur Rós, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and the Kitchen Motors collective, Iceland’s hardy children of nature are proving stubbornly resistant to the World Rock ...
Christian Marclay: djTRIO (Asphodel)
Review by Rob Young, The Wire, January 2005
CHRISTIAN MARCLAY's djTRIO is a changeable turntablist threesome with himself as the constant. The seven tracks here document seven different improvisations in as many locations. ...
Scott Walker: From the sun lounger to the electric chair: Scott Walker's experimental genius
Comment by Rob Young, The Guardian, 26 March 2019
Fired up by Noam Chomsky in the late 1970s, the musician's "late style" became a forbidding avant-garde zone that fearlessly engaged the modern world. ...
Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man: Out of Season
Review by Rob Young, The Wire, December 2002
Lighting out for a rural retreat, Portishead singer Beth Gibbons and ex-Talk Talk bassist Paul Webb fashion a pastoral strain of folk rock. ...
Vladislav Delay: Against the grain
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, March 2000
"I'm quite a moody person and I like blue music," says Vladislav Delay, the enigmatic 23 year old musician from Helsinki, and the latest prodigy ...
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, May 2000
Fusing traditional musics and puppet displays, Heri Dono's extraordinary installations and sculptures satirise the trashed landscape of Indonesia. ...
Profile and Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, May 2001
For 20 years, Mike Harding and Jon Wozencraft's audiovisual Touch label has refused to dumb down its message of complexity in jouissance ...
Retrospective and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, April 2008
A fearless explorer, a radical traditionalist, and one of England's greatest folk singers — but why hasn't she performed for 30 years? ...
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks: Mirror Traffic
Review by Rob Young, Uncut, September 2011
The cryptic professor of American indie leads his Jicks to a fifth. ...
Review by Rob Young, Uncut, March 2012
SINCE JONATHAN MEIBURG and Will Sheff splintered off from Okkervil River in 2001, the reason was ostensibly to create a backwater in which they could ...
Lee Ranaldo: Between The Times And The Tides
Review and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, April 2012
SOLO SONIC YOUTH albums often act like a colour filter that reveals hidden patterns in a picture by blocking out certain aspects of the spectrum. ...
Richard Thompson: Walking On A Wire
Review and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, August 2009
Atop the emotional tightrope... an expansive, career-spanning four-CD set for Anglicana's finest guitar warrior. ...
Review by Rob Young, Uncut, July 2009
Raggle-taggle Glasgow ensemble let freedom ring in the church of folk-rock. For the past six or seven years, a loose collective of Glaswegian musicians have been ...
Review by Rob Young, Uncut, April 2013
ARRIVING IN THE week the skeleton of Richard III was identified, receiving m b v is similarly akin to coming face to face with history. ...
X-TG: Desertshore: The Final Report
Review and Interview by Rob Young, Uncut, January 2013
RADICALLY REWORKING a Nico album, Throbbing Gristle leave Genesis behind. ...
Aphex Twin, David Toop: Aphex Twin: transparent messages
Essay by Rob Young, The Wire, April 1995
Music is finding new ways to simulate dream states, the latest being the twilight zone sonic reveries of Richard James, a.k.a. Aphex Twin. Rob Young ...
Cluster, Julian Cope, Hans-Joachim Roedelius: Hans-Joachim Roedelius: Harmonic Convergence
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, November 1996
When Cluster's Hans-Joachim Roedelius met his number one fan Julian Cope, Rob Young was there to hear the exchange. But first, he spoke to Roedelius ...
Richie Hawtin: Immaculate consumption
Interview by Rob Young, The Wire, June 1998
In his Plastikman guise, Richie Hawtin used to bomb the dancefloor with bullet-hard Techno. Now he seeks solace and inspiration in the minimal artwork of ...
Ducktails: Ducktails III – Arcade Dynamics
Review by Rob Young, The Wire, February 2011
REMEMBER HOW slack and casual early Pavement releases like Slanted And Enchanted seemed at the time? ...
Alan Lomax: John Szwed: The Man Who Recorded The World – A Biography Of Alan Lomax
Book Review by Rob Young, The Wire, February 2011
WHO'D BE A folk song collector? ...
Duncan Heining Equinox: Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers – British Jazz, 1960-1975
Book Review by Rob Young, The Wire, March 2013
IN 1971, TRUMPETER Kenny Wheeler walked into a studio, greeted bassist Ken Baldock, organist Harry Stoneham, composer Duncan Lamont and others, and laid down a ...
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