AYUSP is a new collaboration between Sheffield musicians, Graham McElearney and Paul Mills. They share a love of German electronic music, from the days when that country was producing bands who sounded like nothing else we’d ever heard before.
Some came from well known bands such as Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk – other music came from lesser known musicians such as Klaus Schultz and Michael Rother. After nailing their colours to this era of sounds, AYUSP have managed to use modern technology to create something really exciting.
Their music is simultaneously a tribute and a channelling, but most of all it is an exciting soundscape of new music, but using established sounds which are just as fresh today as they were back in the day. Titles of instrumentals always fascinate and even puzzle me, but a track called ‘The Mourning of Synth Widows’ perhaps speaks for itself as an explanation of how much time Paul and Graham have spent preparing for this release. Other titles, such as ‘Trans-Edale Express’ need no further comment if you are at all familiar with Kraftwerk
In addition to producing original sounds, a parallel strand to their work, although not included on this release, is the recreation of ‘lost’ music. One such project involves a famous Tangerine Dream set, from York Minster in the early seventies. They’ve analysed and transcribed bootleg recordings to re-create this piece of music so well, it was recently broadcast on The Freak Zone on BBC 6Music.
There are over 40 minutes of music here, and a casual listener could easily think they’d stumbled across some lost recordings by Harmonia or NEU, but it’s all comes from the creative minds (and electronic instruments) of these two. They have a real talent for creating a sound which at once sounds exciting and new, while echoing the musicians and music of a past era.
9/10
