RICHARD YOUNGS
— Alastair Galbraith had told me that becoming a parent was a whole new way of falling in love. When my son Sorley was born in 2006, I found out he was right. New worlds of emotional and creative possibilities opened up to me. In some sense, I stopped caring, and with that discovered a whole new depth of caring.
If you’re reading this and have heard my name before it is probably as a musician. The expanded emotional base from which I now operated changed how I made music. Cyril Connolly said, “there is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.” I couldn’t say that anything I’ve done has attained greatness or even if it is art. But, here is some anecdotal evidence against his notion. Before there was a pram in the hall I struggled over several months to write and record half of what became an album called Autumn Response. Once Sorley was born I wrote and recorded the other half in an afternoon. Perhaps it was the sleep deprivation, but now I can’t tell which bits are which. They all seem of a similar quality. Of course, music is only a part of my life. I have changed too. I am told I am a lot more open-minded. I have time for people very different from me and for opinions not my own. When someone means so much, my ego can mean so much less.
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Richard Youngs is a multi-instrumentalist from Glasgow, Scotland. Youngs began releasing albums in the early 90s on various independent labels. His music ranges from pure experimental, instrumental, minimal, and avant-garde through to folk-inspired songwriting and progressive rock.