Fragments is the third solo acoustic guitar album from Cambridge based guitarist and multi-instrumentalist David Youngs. It’s been ten years since his last release due to other collaborative projects including drumming and producing for Cambridge-based art-rock outfit Ember Rev.
It has been very much a labour of love making this album, taking around three years to develop, practice and record. Some of the tunes on this collection of recordings are relatively recently born into the world, written and re-written until David felt that they were finished. It is always hard to draw a line under a composition – there are other pieces on the album which he has played live for many years but have somehow never got round to recording – they have often morphed into slightly different shapes, been re-worked slightly since they were originally written. At some point you have to declare a definitive version of sorts. And finally some of the pieces have their roots way, way in the past, re-purposing ideas that have been drifting through his thoughts for – in some cases – over twenty years. You’d like to think that those numbers are all the better for having matured inside his psyche for all that time, and that stylistically they blend and fit in with the newer material to form a cohesive musical story.
David Youngs is a multi-instrumentalist based in Cambridge, UK. In recent years he has been focusing intensely on the acoustic guitar, developing a percussive, finger-style approach to produce instrumental works often featuring unusual yet accessible time signatures and scales.
His contemporary, progressive playing has been compared to that of the late great Eric Roche, crossed with touches of the freedom and lightness heard on Michael Hedges’ early works. In 2011, David was fortunate enough to attend a study workshop with Preston Reed (“widely thought of as the world’s most gifted guitarist” – Total Guitar) and he continues to develop his style to further what has been an entertaining and personal musical journey to date.
Reviewers of his acoustic guitar work commented that he seemed to have ‘appeared fully formed out of nowhere’, although in reality his début solo guitar album ‘Transience’ was the product of many years of study and adaptation of drum and bass guitar rudiments for incorporation into his finger-picked acoustic guitar style.
From the outset, David focused on melodic structure and groove to maintain a mindful balance between technique and musicality. RnR magazine described his debut release as ‘ a disc of virtuoso playing that somehow manages to avoid even the slightest whiff of showing off…. technique in the service of a good time’, while Sound On Sound magazine commented similarly that ‘his extraordinary technical ability is married with genuine compositional talent, so that nothing here comes across as empty showboating’.
Continuing to compose following this maxim, David continues to perform live at arts festivals, acoustic clubs, guitar events and festivals to promote his music and meet new musical friends.
Artist’s website: www.davidyoungs.net
David Youngs live:
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