Young Marble Giants - fun for your subwoofer

There's a radio show that is currently on NPR and podcast called Sound Opinions. It's a fun show to listen to even when the two critics who host the show get a bit too impressed by themselves. But, overall they've done a good job introducing me to music and groups I may not otherwise have checked out.

So, the other week they played a song by a group called the Young Marble Giants. YMG released a single album called Colossal Youth and some EPs around 1980. Their style is extremely minimalist - a female singer, a guitar player and a bassist. Every now and then they would add a drum machine or a wurlitzer type sound.

A year or two ago a remastered version of Colossal Youth was released as part of a 3 disc set that included some other releases and a handful of songs from a session with John Peel.

Music-wise, I really enjoy the minimalist sound. Sound quality on the remixed album is quite good. The instruments come across cleanly along with the singer's voice. Also, because of the minimalist approach, the electric bass guitar comes across without having to compete with too many instruments. So, you get to let you system show off it's (relatively) low frequency performance. Although it's not 20Hz stuff, it's still low enough to let the sub vibrate the room a bit at times.



Mitch