David Young

David Young (el-b): [Element of Crime: Mittelpunkt der Welt]

"Born on the 2nd of May, 1949, in London. He received a BA in philosophy after writing a thesis on Kant. While studying he was already playig with numerous bands, and worked as live-mixer with artists as diverse as Country Joe McDonald, The Incredible String Band, David Bowie and Duke Ellington.
The 1970s lead him via Munich and Los Angeles to New York, where he studies sound engineering and works as a recording engineer there, recording for example Bonnie Tyler, Jim Steinman, Bronski Beat, Elliot Randall and the remains of Steely Dan. He becomes a collaborator of former Velvet Underground member John Cale, plays in John Cale's band from 1980 to 1985, and co-produces four of his albums.
In 1987 he moves back to London, where he produces with John Cale the album "Try to be Mensch" by Berlin band Element of Crime. Since then, David Young collaborates with the band as producer, and since 1993 as live-guitarist. He also works as producer for other artists, such as Alexander Veljanow (Deine Lakaien) or Hector Zazou's project "La Nouvelle Polyphonie Corse". In 2002, he replaces Christian Hartje as permanent bass guitar player for Element of Crime." (Based on the short biography at Discogs, but modified according to the German version on the Element of Crime website)

Interlude: Support the Artists

When travelling through music blogs, one of the most often heard statement is: "Support the artists". Everyone of you knows how she/he can do this, yet I have a few little recommendations here:

A) Support Plushmusic!


"Plushmusic is a new company founded by the cellist Adrian Brendel and saxophonist Hayden Chisholm, in partnership with the technology entrepreneur Stephen Jelley. It is run almost exclusively by professional musicians. Its executive producer is former Radio 3 producer Lyndon Jones. The site is produced by Matt Jolly and edited by Simon Ings."
Plushmusic has recently organized a plushmusic festival - I found a few little snippets of it on Hayden Chisholm's blog website www.softspeakers.com, for example "Peninsula". They feature classical, jazz and world music, separately as well as interwoven, on the festival and on the Plushmusic website. You can watch a lot of wonderful live videos on www.plushmusic.tv and then... support the artists by buying video or audio downloads in high quality (i.e. flac). However, all this would probably only work, if you haven't disabled your browser's flash functions ;-)
As a starting point I highly recommend the short documentary on Simon Nabatov.


B) Support D.D. Jackson!

Sometime in mid-2007 the pianist D.D. Jackson left some message on Bumkun Cha's Pathway to Unknown Worlds. I took the hint and listened to all of Jackson's 22 podcasts. He's been a very talkative man (I can't tell if he still is, because he's not posted any new podcasts for a long time) and heavily advertised his own work, but also provided interesting thoughts and insights not only on jazz, but also on the current status of the music business.
From his website you'll quite a few of free content, just like in the case of plushmusic. You can watch him play with his hands looking like putty and producing wonderful sounds, you can download some live samples.
So and how to support Mr. Jackson? He's got his albums offered for downloading at Artistshare. An album costs between 10 and 14 US dollars, depending on the bitrate you choose. The clou is: If you pay for these downloads, you'll get a lot of extra materials, not available anywhere else, for example artist interviews, videos of the recordings session, and - the most interesting feature - sheet music of some of the pieces.
Jackson's playing is very eclectic: He's well aware of the whole history of jazz piano playing and incorporates it all into his own music. I personally prefer his rather wild, free, freak-out moments - his ballad playing is often a little bit toooo sweet. Besides the newer albums offered at his artistshare side you should also try his first album Peace-Song with David Murray and Jackson showing off their wonderful interplay: They're a perfect match.


C) Support David Binney!

If you don't have the chance to see David Binney play live, there's a way to compensate: He's often recording his gigs and offering them for download from his website at moderate prices. Right now his new CD is out, which you also get directly from there.