THE YOUNG GODS "PLAY TERRY RILEY IN C"

"The Young Gods have an innate understanding of dynamics: when to crank it up and when to pare it down through degrees of speed and volume"

The Young Gods are publishing a new record with Two Gentlemen, ‘Play Terry Riley In C’. Needless to say this is a fertile meeting between two monuments who have helped shape the cutting-edge music of the last few decades. Terry Riley, born in 1935, is the cornerstone on which a considerable number of artists have relied to liberate their relationship to the process and methods of creation. In the same way, The Young Gods revolutionised, from the second half of the 1980s, their relationship with rock music by converting guitars into samplers. The dialogue between these two pioneers underpins a particularly fiery record.

Composed and premiered in 1964, In C is a major piece in the contemporary music repertoire of the second half of the 20th century, and a pivotal moment in its history. This particular structure influences the musical nature of the piece: In C (and this is another of its revolutionary characteristics) was the first work to offer a successful synthesis of repetition and variation. To immerse oneself in it is to experience a pulsation, a swirling fabric of sound, but different with each completed orbit. In this album The Young Gods offer a new interpretation of In C, as a trio and with their own sound vocabulary – electronic instruments, drums, and guitars. They have chosen to follow the score and Terry Riley’s indications, while allowing for some additional freedom.

The motto of ‘Play Terry Riley In C’ is to play and listen to each other; it is also to offer a series of challenges, questions, and musical ‘maybes’ that are articulated into a coherent beauty. Or, to put it in the words of The Young Gods, ‘to set the conditions for music to exist’.