AMOR’s avant-disco excursions take place over endless nights and forever days, with Richard Youngs the groove prophet guiding the way

“I’m sinking into a signal,” proclaims Richard Youngs as he is consumed by purpose in truth. AMOR are that signal and the signal is a miracle to be received with full heart. Richard Youngs, Michael Francis Duch, Paul Thomson and Luke Fowler are players in a cosmic game, caught up on the expansiveness of life. They’re making dance music for the soul and AMOR are of the head and the body, of the sun and the moon. AMOR exist in endless nights building upon forever days.

The Glasgow super(nal)group’s debut album is a series of avant-disco excursions that play the long game rather than settle for fleeting hooks. “Full Fathom Future” is like the scene in Orson Welles’s The Trial where Josef K walks through a door in one part of the city and comes out in another; it’s China Miéville’s The City and the City. Geographical space is collapsed upon itself and a party in a Glasgow flat is also the Loft in New York. The track’s building disco groove goes nowhere but everywhere, capturing a moment and existing inside of it. Other practitioners would’ve foregrounded the piano, but AMOR hold back, allowing the keys to become the track’s conscience. 

The bleeps, drums and vocals of “Glimpses Across Thunder” suggest a version of DFA that has bypassed the need for referentiality, done away with the uneasy symbiosis with hipsterism. AMOR go straight to the source – are themselves the source of the signal. It isn’t about authenticity so much as owning a groove and living it. They get cosmic. DJs can maximise cosmic enlightenment on the dancefloor by playing “Glimpses Across Thunder” back to back with “Sauchiehall Withdrawal” by Golden Teacher (and indeed Richard McMaster of GT mixed this album with AMOR).

Golden robed and masked beings descend for the duration of “Heaven Among the Days”, its tribal beats and elastic song structure a long bright journey into morning as night. These cuts stretch and contract while always remaining taut – although it’s a tautness that feels free. They’re all long-playing, regardless of actual length. Space is a vital component and you can almost hear the instruments breathe along with the tape echoes. AMOR invite wanderings of the mind and encourage imagination to float into the gaps, becoming part of the texture.

“Phantoms of the Sun” digs deep with an infectious 4/4 and counters with hints of New Age mysticism. It’s a dance between beats and anti-beats until that elastic bass drops in and pulls everything up to the heavens. Youngs is himself elevated to another plain: “Everyone / Our time has begun / Everyone / This innocence is done / Everyone / The stars they have won”. He continues as spirit guide on “Truth of Life” while morphing into groove prophet and a David Byrne plugged into the heart of the matter. Richard Youngs sounds like he knows the universe and is prepared to impart that knowing to you, if only you will give up and give in to the music. His words signal experience rather than re-sell secondhand experiences.

amor-glasgow.bandcamp.com

Stewart Gardiner
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