Part the First: The Dark Young were a Boston rock band of a strange sort. From 1991 to 1995, they blended prog, goth, and avant-garde jazz with the sometimes whimsical, sometimes macabre poetry of lead singer/reciter Manny Arenas. Regular performers at the local clubs, they released their 11-track debut album—on cassette only!—in 1994. Sessions for a second album began the following year but came to a halt when guitarist Mac Randall got a job as senior editor of Musician magazine and moved to New York. For all intents and purposes, the Dark Young were no more. Or so it seemed.
Part the Second: Beginning in 2008, purely for fun, the members of the Dark Young set out to finish the songs they’d begun recording 13 years earlier. This was easier said than done. Drummer Geoff Chase and bassist Mark White were still in Boston and Randall remained in New York, but Arenas was now in Arizona and saxophonist/flutist Jeremy Woodruff lived in Berlin, Germany. However, with help from the Internet and Pro Tools, the old 1995 tracks were completed to everyone’s satisfaction. The project went so well, in fact, that Chase made a suggestion: How about recording some more, this time picking from a substantial selection of songs that the band had played live in the ’90s but never brought into a studio? Having agreed on 10 additional tracks to try, the group got to work. Slowly.
It took six more years to finish those 10 songs, which involved the five core members of the Dark Young plus two longtime friends, saxophonist/clarinetist Jeff Hudgins and bassist Lizzy Daymont. Sessions were conducted in Boston, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Seattle, and Chennai, India (Woodruff’s latest place of residence). Once recording was finally done, Chase took on the unenviable task of mixing and mastering, taking tracks of various ages from many sources and making them feel like a balanced whole. In October 2015, just in time for Halloween, he pronounced his labors complete.
And so here it is at last. An album that is by turns pretty, angry, quirky, and creepy. An album that revels in both the tricky twists of 11/8 time and the simple joys of the power chord. An album that declaims, screams, and then sighs. An album 20 years and three continents in the making. The Dark Young: Part the Second.
credits
released October 31, 2015
THE DARK YOUNG II
1. Caverns of Doom (M. Randall)
2. Vague Eastern (M. Randall)
3. Flower of Evil/Vote for God (words: M. Arenas/music:
The Dark Young)
4. Cause of Dysfunction (M. Randall)
5. Thoughts of a Soulless Savior (words: M. Arenas/music:
The Dark Young)
6. Femme Fatale (M. Arenas/D. Fetler)
7. We Annihilate Your Family (M. Randall)
8. The City Never Sleeps (M. Arenas/D. Fetler)
9. Anathema (M. Randall)
10. Brand Name Importance (M. Randall)
11. XIII (words: M. Arenas/music: The Dark Young)
12. Plastic Canopy (M. Randall)
13. Ring-a-Ding-Dingy (M. Arenas/M. Randall)
Recorded in Boston, MA; Watertown, MA; New York, NY;
Brooklyn, NY; Seattle, WA; Berlin, Germany; and Chennai, India
between 1994 and 2014
PRODUCED BY GEOFF CHASE
Engineers: Geoff Chase, Mac Randall, Jonathan Deily, Don Piper,
Lizzy Daymont, Jeff Hudgins, Jeremy Woodruff, and whoever
the Berklee students were who engineered “Vague Eastern”
Mixed and Mastered by Geoff Chase