Last updated: 11 hours ago
Four decades ago, The Young Gods reconfigured rock music using the new technology
of sampling in a manner no one else had thought to. In a rock and pop world dominated
by Anglo-American orthodoxies, they proposed something huge and avant European in
origin. Whereas others lazily recycled samples of old James Brown and Led Zeppelin riffs,
in a spirit of enfeebled postmodernism, as if to suggest there was nothing new under the
sun, The Young Gods created a new, elemental energy using the dead matter of the rock
and classical music they sampled as fossil fuels - they rediscovered fire, a fire that raged
through their first two albums. The
formula was simple - drums, voice, samples - but what they wrought was revolutionary,
post-postmodern.
And now, Appear/Disappear, perhaps their most evolved album to date, which draws on
all of their accumulated strengths and facets, from the quintessence of early Young Gods,
to the ambient nuances of their mid-period, to the polyrhythms of In C. It is a deeply
personal album for Treichler, lamenting the situation in Gaza, drone warfare but also
celebrating the solidarity shown by citizens during the pandemic. It is
also a reflection on mortality, affected by Treichler’s losing his wife while working on the
album in 2023.
In rock terms, The Young Gods are anything but ephemeral - their curiosity, their energy
remains undimmed since they first emerged from Fribourg in a shock attack on dull
norms in 1985. As Treichler says, “God’s not dead!”
of sampling in a manner no one else had thought to. In a rock and pop world dominated
by Anglo-American orthodoxies, they proposed something huge and avant European in
origin. Whereas others lazily recycled samples of old James Brown and Led Zeppelin riffs,
in a spirit of enfeebled postmodernism, as if to suggest there was nothing new under the
sun, The Young Gods created a new, elemental energy using the dead matter of the rock
and classical music they sampled as fossil fuels - they rediscovered fire, a fire that raged
through their first two albums. The
formula was simple - drums, voice, samples - but what they wrought was revolutionary,
post-postmodern.
And now, Appear/Disappear, perhaps their most evolved album to date, which draws on
all of their accumulated strengths and facets, from the quintessence of early Young Gods,
to the ambient nuances of their mid-period, to the polyrhythms of In C. It is a deeply
personal album for Treichler, lamenting the situation in Gaza, drone warfare but also
celebrating the solidarity shown by citizens during the pandemic. It is
also a reflection on mortality, affected by Treichler’s losing his wife while working on the
album in 2023.
In rock terms, The Young Gods are anything but ephemeral - their curiosity, their energy
remains undimmed since they first emerged from Fribourg in a shock attack on dull
norms in 1985. As Treichler says, “God’s not dead!”
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