Matthew Young - Undercurrents

Drag City and Yoga Records are delighted to return to the music of Matthew Young. Following Recurring Dreams (1981, reissued 2014) and Traveler's Advisory (1986, reissued 2010), Undercurrents (2025) collects eight oddly dissimilar pieces that somehow fit together perfectly. Although unique enough to be called outsider, Young’s new album occupies a musical world accessible to fans of many genres.

Matthew Young, born in 1950, grew up in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. When he showed early musical interest, his parents bought an upright piano, and Matthew began taking lessons. In his teens, he attended concerts by Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, and Count Basie, and grew up to discover iconoclasts such as Erik Satie, Charles Ives, John Cage, Harry Partch, Brian Eno, and experimental rock groups such as Can and Harmonia. He also regularly attended and played at folk music gatherings in the nearby New Jersey Pine Barrens.

In the late ’70s, Young took a summer seminar on computer music at Princeton taught by Richard Cann and Michael Dellaira. Inspired, Young bought his own EMS Synthi and Revox tape recorder and began working on electronic music at home. His music began to appear in local theater productions, leading to the 1981 release of Recurring Dreams, through New York distributor NMDS. The Trenton Times described the record as “an album of liquid, effervescent keyboard tones; tingling, trembling notes; and surprising, occasionally bizarre effects.” Later, Young became obsessed with the hammered dulcimer, and in 1986 he released a new album, Traveler's Advisory, which featured the instrument prominently, along with electronics, tape effects, and his first foray into vocals.

Composed and recorded over the span of several decades, Undercurrents displays the wide range of Young’s various sonic pallets: similar to Recurring Dreams, the electronic landscapes meander coherently, and much like Traveler's Advisory, the album skews from the nearly algorithmic computer music of side one to the moving pastoral folk of the second.

On the opener “Reflexion,” a quartet of marimbas twist and turn over each other, while in “One and All,” a harp melody is overtaken by various electronic effects. The 12-minute title track is an abstract weaving of piano and synthesis, with the six sections named after oceanic currents. “A Game of Chess, a Game of Chance” consists of sparse electronic tones created on the Princeton University IBM mainframe during his studies in 1976. This all makes way for the second half of Undercurrents, where settings of Marion Lineaweaver's poems, “The Summer Girls” and "Her Key is Minor," showcase Young's honest, fragile vocal approach, conveying a deep sense of soulful longing, and the latter even sweetly approaching something akin to synthpop. The piano on "Inflexion" calls back to the end of “Reflexion," and in the album closer, “Into the Woods,” Young plays the hammered dulcimer with the disciplined reverence of an alchemist.

Simply put, Undercurrents is a triumph across many musical realms... this is Matthew Young’s world.