Younghusband Crystal EP Sonic Cathedral

No one likes a gloater but on certain occasions it becomes difficult not to puff out ones chest with pride and feel that, for at least once in you life, you’ve picked a winner.

Which is how we are currently feeling at CDX Towers after hearing the new Crystal EP by Younghusband, a band who began their formative years releasing lo-fi, psychedelic ditties through our own little micro label Culturedeluxe Records(http://www.culturedeluxe.com/label).

Not that the early recordings that YH main man Euan Hinshelwood made with bassist Joe Chilton resemble the new sonic direction that the band (augmented by guitarist Adam Beach and drummer Pete Baker) have taken since the release of  ‘Carousel \ Nothing Nothing’ (which came out earlier in the year on legendary indie ‘Too Pure’) and the new Sonic Cathedral backed E.P, however I would like to think that the seeds were well and truly sown then for what should become a very fruitful, and hopefully successful, musical career.

 Taking elements from post punk, krautrock and early sixties psychedelia the band manage to craft a melodic, hypnotic sound without actually emulating their influences to a point where it’s essentially just a poor realisation of something that has been done better a long time before (which seems to be something that’s rife within not only the music but also the film and gaming industry at present).

Younghusband’s approach is to take similar ideas to that of their musical forefathers (like building songs from a single chord) then mould them in a way that makes the sound uniquely theirs, using layers of sound to create an interesting backdrop to Hinshelwoods, slightly falsetto, vocal melodies.

Of all the four tracks, second song ‘Constantly In Love’ is the standout for me as it captures the perfect mix of lo-fi drone underpinning a perfect pop melody. It also comes with a very odd video courtesy of French video artist Elsa Philippe (below)

 
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