young british artists

Interview with the Stool Pigeon, follow link for full text

- STOOL PIGEON

2010 was a pretty slow year for Young British Artists - from being bright young upstarts, they took time out to mill about, and the start of 2011 saw them almost playing catch-up. A thrilling set at The Great Escape illustrated the fact that they've far from been left behind, whilst this new track, Everything In Front Of You, shows they might actually be a couple of paces ahead of the competition now as they thud and thunder their way through a track fit to make your heart stop.

- LOST LOST LOST BLOG

Anyone still gutted that The Strokes’ latest album was about as interesting as watching Albert Hammond, Jr.’s hairline recede will find a ready alternative in YBA. ‘Everything In Front Of You’ is drunk on speed: more Tracey Emin’s unmade bed than Damien Hirst’s diamond skull. You can almost see the lager hurtling through the air at festivals.

- NME

Perhaps it’s the dizzying depth of the new bands sprouting in the Manchester music scene at the moment, or perhaps it’s sheer, dumb, laziness on my part.
Admittedly, the latter is the most likely, though there are just so many fascinating bands in and around Manchester now, that you, and I, would be forgiven for assuming the former as most probable.
Either way, I ought to have covered Young British Artists months ago. I didn’t though, so today am making amends by way of a breathlessly enthusiastic slew of praise-slurry.
It’s simple: listen to Lived In Skin, and tell me that it isn’t as exciting and – yikes – fresh sounding a song as you’ve heard for a long time.
Maybe it’s the driving, relentless drums, or maybe it’s the swirl of – urgh – intellect that surrounds the song. I think that it’s that the band sound like they know what they’re doing, where they’re going, and how they’re going to get there. You don’t need to know those details – just feel the confidence, the desire, the plan.
Young British Artists shoot pinholes of laser-light through the fug, and deliver songs more taut, more deliberately designed and more attack-minded than the majority of their contemporaries. Jolts of pleasure, life, and bright, white light. Excellent. - A NEW BAND A DAY

A BLOG FROM BROOKLYN - WWW.SYFFAL.COM

A REVIEW FROM STEVE ON HIS SITE - LAMACQ?

"Right, let's give it a go". One day these words will be familiar to you as all those other great off-the-cuff spoken intros, heralding as they do Young British Artists' second single "Lived In Skin". Released in a very limited edition of 300 (buy the single and they send you the MP3s) this is already looking like a collector’s item in the making. Why? Because Young British Artists somehow encapsulate everything that’s been great about slightly gloomy northern indie music over the past 30 years and wrap it up in a contemporary edge. “Lived In Skin” is always a highlight of the live set, all hammering drums and razor-wire guitar and its urgent, taut melody carried through the bassline, and here Tom Knott (surely one of Manchester’s greatest contemporary record producers) has done a sterling job in capturing its dark-edged spirit. The last great Manchester band to combine lead singer with bassist were, of course, The Chameleons, and Leo Scott has that same sort of tension in his vocal/bass interplay as Mark Burgess did: the overall sound being loosely related to them, The Longcut and contemporary fuzz-indie bands such as A Place To Bury Strangers – and it’s already one of the singles of the year in my book. B-side “Million Miles” sees them in slightly less frenzied mode but no less intense, all storm-clouds-on-the-horizon atmospheric. Welcome to the darker side of the new Manchester. - Manchester Music