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 Dennis
Young
Old Dog: New Tricks (Day and Nite Music)
By Sebastian Chan
There’s a tendency in pop music to think short term.
And under this thinking it is difficult to conceive that Dennis
Young could still be making music. Drummer/percussionist for
the seminal late 70s/early 80s New York punk-funk band Liquid
Liquid, who were part of the whole No-Wave scene back then
alongside Glenn Branca, ESG, Bush Tetras, Dennis Young and
Liquid Liquid are both still, clearly, making music. Indeed,
on this latest album, Liquid Liquid singer Sal Principato
guests on several tracks along with the guitar of David Axelrod,
both riding Young’s super funky percussion - Latin and
African polyrhythms at the fore. Of course, punk funk is back
in vogue – the initial signs of a revival came a few
years ago first with MoWax reissuing Liquid Liquid’s
self-titled mini album featuring the famous Cavern, the track
whose bassline was sampled for White Lines and subsequently
bankrupted both the 99 label and Suagrhill. More recently
there have been a plethora of no-wave compilations bringing
to the surface many lost gems, as well as the new no-wave
of !!!, the DFA stable and others. Young’s solo release
then is well timed and for the most part keeps pace with these
young pretenders, although most of the punk urgency is gone,
replaced by a quite lovely languid groove. Apparently there’s
a new Liquid Liquid album in the wings as well.
 Dennis
Young
Old Dog: New Tricks (Day and Nite Music)
A few things you should know about Dennis Young before we
begin: his primary interests are jazz and world music; he
favours the marimba for percussion and employs an exotic instrument
known as the ‘electric bowed banjolin’. Oh, one
more thing, his day job is percussionist with New York City’s
Liquid Liquid - their dance hit ‘Cavern’ was pilfered
by Grandmaster Flash for the impeccable ’White Lines’.
That got your attention didn’t it? As a title, ‘Old
Dog: New Tricks’ reflects Young’s long career
(nine solo albums, and countless Liquid Liquid outings), and
while there’s nothing here as relentlessly adrenalising
as ‘White Lines’, the tricks are still mightily
impressive. In delivery Young recalls Tindersticks’
Stuart Staples, while in outlook he could teach Peter Gabriel
a few of those tricks. Like Gabriel, Young uses world music
as both a backdrop and a springboard for his own ideas, so
when the drone of a Middle Eastern soukh appears in the middle
of the simultaneously frantic and relaxed ‘Beautiful
Dream’ it is as welcome and as natural as the rise of
the sun. Elsewhere, shades of David Sylvian, The Creatures
and Pat Metheny emerge, and very welcome they are too.
Review from Wire Magazine April 2004
 Dennis
Young
Old Dog: New Tricks (independent)
NYC's arty groove-punks Liquid Liquid (no-wavers whose '83
tune "Cavern" was cannibalized by Grandmaster Flash
for "White Lines") paraded the worldly percussion
work of Dennis Young, a master of all things that go ping,
pop, clank and thump. His current solo album seems a reasonable
extension of what LL were up to - mellower and more pensive
but a rhythm junkie's delight nontheless, produced to sound,
ahem, cavernous. Proper jazz excursions and global pop in
a Peter Gabriel vein (minus the gravitas) share space with
more indefinable efforts, stuff that might compare to what
the Clash were up to with Combat Rock's "Sean Flynn."
LL singer Sal Principato pops in to handle vox on the exceptional,
dark and danceable "Signal Up Ahead." 8/10
(Rupert Bottenberg)
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