Andrew Lyster’s YOUTH label is rooted in the hardy club music culture of North West England, but its activities extend well beyond the dancefloor to span graphic design, album releases across many formats, as well as an independent venue, MØ6B, all of it rooted in an ethos of collaboration and community. In the 2010s, Lyster was part of the inventive collective and record label meandyou, who hosted numerous parties across the region, and were closely affiliated with the innovative multi-use space Soup in Manchester. YOUTH started in 2018, and its music is eclectic, mobile and rarely settles down into predictable patterns or formulas, with a roster of artists that stretches beyond Northern England to France, Italy, Egypt and beyond.

Hajj
“Burning Illusions”
From No Soul, No God, No Devil, No Existence (2023)

Much of the music on YOUTH is beatless, or its rhythms are fluid and elusive. In the space that is left, vocal sounds often provide a centre or reference point. “Burning Illusions” by French producer Florent Hadjinazarian, from the recent album No Soul, No God, No Devil, No Existence, gives a feel for the ambiguous, abstract music that the label does so well, a crawling beat accompanied by a plaintive “oh” that suggests a melancholy sound system lament.

Dijit
“Saga”
From The Room (2023)

Five minutes of non-stop anything that displays the musical range of Cairo’s Hashem L Kelesh, who also created the affecting and literal painting on the front of album The Room. From footwork to breakbeat to Latin funk to a kind of punk take on acid house, accompanied by more yearning vocals, “Saga” is intuitive dance music that buzzes with invention, with feint issues of the kind of cross-genre incursions of 1990s NYC illbient trio We.

Silvia Kastel
“Mantide”
From Xantharmony (2022)

The Italian musician was at one point aligned with the free rock and noise scene, through her Ultramarine label and association with guitarist Ninni Morgia, but since has spread her wings as a DJ and electronic music explorer. “Mantide”, taken from the CD EP Xantharmony, is centred around heavy, foreboding strings that transpose from one note to the next in an almost modal manner, an emotive and foreboding piece which is lifted by contrastingly liberated sounds of birdsong.

Significant Other
“Demonology”
From Residuum (2021)

As shown by the stray birdsong, YOUTH is comfortable with outside elements drifting in and sitting alongside their electronic music. Sockethead’s recordings feature meandering improvised piano that scrambles the rigorous electronic logic. On Significant Other’s Residuum album, piano and rippling classical acoustic guitar add a reflective dimension that opens up the timeline of the music. That openness reflects the intuitive, unpretentious ethos that the label nurtures.

FUMU
“B1 Untitled”
From Skinned (2019)

“The Skinned 7" is like four bullets,” says Lyster of this punchy 2019 7" by FUMU. Many YOUTH releases use the 7” format skilfully, with short tracks throwing down a neat idea and then moving on quickly. Here, the Teeside producer drops a dread vocal sample with dubwise echo, and then an oddball dancehall beat, flirting with a hiphop boom-bap and some heavy electronic crackle. It’s in and out in just a few minutes, but is emblematic of the economic, unadorned flex and flow YOUTH explores.

Dave Saved
“Stanza 2”
From Abissio (2021)

“How you frame someone’s music is important,” says Andrew Lyster. A key aspect of how YOUTH frames their own music is the choice of format, with punchy, upfront tracks on their 7"s, and immersive, deep trips that unspool on their cassette releases. Davide Salvati is an electronic producer from Naples, and “Stanza 2” is a cryptic and perfectly formed puzzle of rippling harp-like arpeggios and slowed-down beat samples. It could be an outtake from Tricky’s Maxinquaye or a transmission from the American underground tape scene of the early 2000s.

Yugen Disciple
“Pattern Recognition”
From Ancestor Node (2022)

Manchester electronic music institution Boomkat, and their associates in the Modern Love label and now defunct distributor Baked Goods, provided an influential model for how to nurture a music network for Lyster in the 2000s. “Those labels, and the people involved with them, are all huge influences for me.” There are echoes of UK’s proud techno heritage in mysterious producer Yugen Disciple’s 2018 track “Pattern Recognition” back from YOUTH’s earliest days, whose melancholy descending chords and restless, neurotic click rhythms recall the music of Kirk Degiorgio/As One and B12.

Grimescapes
“Spider”
From Grimescapes (2020)

Urban beatscapes from the Iceman Junglist Kru, the Grimescapes project attempts to take the sounds and textures of the jungle-garage-grime continuum and uses them for abstract sound constructions. “Spider” takes a classic lyric from Wiley, with all the pirate radio static and phase left in, and revels in the distortion.

Read more on YOUTH in Derek Walmsley's Unlimited Editions report printed in The Wire 487. Wire subscribers can also read the article online via the digital magazine library.