(NOTE: The vinyl LP version of this title is to be released for the first time in October 2006. Jagjaguwar previously reissued Sapphie on CD in 2000.)Jagjaguwar is proud to announce the reissue of one of the most important unheard treasures of the last half decade of the twentieth century. Originally issued in 1998 by Oblique Recordings (its second and final release), SAPPHIE was Richard Youngs’ fifth solo full-length and quite a unique album in his already unique oeuvre.Made up of three acoustic tracks — spanning over 37 minutes in length — featuring just classical guitar and voice, SAPPHIE is quiet and introspective. The songs feel like an intimate journey by hand through a song cycle of loss and renewal. Within the context of his massive and ever-growing body of work, SAPPHIE is his most song-based and arguably his most personal. Fans of reclusive sages like Nick Drake, Anne Briggs and Robert Wyatt will most appreciate the timeless quality inherent in Youngs’ songs.In regard to his more experimental work — with collaborators Brian Lavelle and Simon Wickham-Smith, for instance — Melody Maker has called him no less than the “grand-meister of contemporary British improv, spiritual son of Eddie Prevost and Maddy Prior; gentle manipulator of English hymn-notics and religious incantations; protege, challenger and radicaliser of folk, blues, rock, minimalism and improvisation; translator for the sea and the rain and the sky; ambassador to war and peace, to love and anguish,” and “poet-seducer of souls.””I recorded SAPPHIE round my friend John’s flat and it was the first time I’d ever done more than one take. He’s a perfectionist and kept finding reasons to redo each song. A clock ticking too near a microphone. A sudden overload of vocal volume. Downstairs neighbors rolling in late and loud from the pub. Domestic appliance interference. He let me keep one fridge click on “The Graze of Days.” It was early morning by then, my voice was so shot there was no way I was running through that one again. “The guitar is a cheap classical I’ve had for years. I like the sound of it’s nylon strings. The voice is very English and I’ve had that for years, too. Despite moving to Scotland, nothing seems likely to shift my Cambridge accent. There’s no overdubbing and no remixing. Everything went straight to DAT. What you hear is the best of what went on.”–Richard Youngs, August 1998