Both reissues arrive on coloured 10” vinyl with remastered audio
Out on vinyl today, we’ve reissued two early EPs from The Underground Youth – the 2014 ‘Beautiful & Damned’ EP and 2011’s Low Slow Needle’, now celebrating it's ten-year anniversary. Arriving following the Berlin-based band’s recent tenth album, ‘The Falling’, both of these reissues come on coloured 10” vinyl with remastered audio. You can stream the EPs and read all about them below. The vinyl is available to buy here.
A homage to the F. Scott Fitzgerald book of the same name, the 4 track ‘Beautiful & Damned’ EP confirmed Dyer’s obsession for the darker side of literature and poetry of the last two centuries, as well as his early DIY approach. Rigorously recorded in the band’s home studio with the help of producer James Shillito in early 2014, ‘Beautiful & Damned’ acted as a preview to their 2015 ‘Haunted’ LP.
It was the first The Underground Youth material featuring synth and electronic equipment and also represented a significant shift to a much darker sound and lyrical content, as anticipated by their first single/video ‘Naked’ – a fan-favourite to this day that exhibits a perfect encounter between the atmospheres of the Cocteau Twins and the early Creation Records sound.
Originally released on October 17th 2011, ‘Low Slow Needle’s hauntingly minimal, neo-psychedelic melancholy provides a more lo-fi snapshot of The Underground Youth’s earlier days – when TUYwas more of a DIY solo endeavour for Blackpool-born musician Craig Dyer, as opposed to the much-adored, full-band, international touring force that it is now. Looking back on ‘Low Slow Needle’, Dyer said: “The EP was recorded in September 2011, I had just returned to the UK from St. Petersburg where Olya [now drummer in The Underground Youth] and I had just got married. Olya had to stay in Russia to finalise her paperwork before we would move into our first home together in Manchester.
It was a difficult time, being apart after just getting married, and so I distracted myself by working on these songs that would become the Low Slow Needle EP. It was sort of my love letter to that period, looking back and also looking to the future. I worked closely with mine and Olya's friend in St. Petersburg, Daria Xenofontova, who gave her beautiful voice to my words and featured on three of the most popular songs on the EP, 'Midnight Lust', 'Addiction' and 'Blue'. These three songs still remain popular with our fans, who still request we play them live to this day.”
When compared with the cinematic folk-noir heard on ‘The Falling’, what we find here captures a more stark and stripped-back The Underground Youth as the project was about to come out of its embryonic phase: “All five tracks were recorded in my bedroom and I really wanted to strip back the sound, to give a romantic feel of that period for me.
To consider it 10 years on, it feels like the beginning to the next step of the journey, my life in Manchester with Olya, making contact with Casper at Fuzz Club and signing up with the label (this came just after the release of Low Slow Needle) and us putting together the first incarnation of TUY's live band (again this followed the release of the EP). So, in a way, this record marked the end of the first era of The Underground Youth, and in doing so, paved the way for the next.”
