(NOTE: The vinyl LP version of this title is to be reissued for the first time by Jagjaguwar in October 2006. Jagjaguwar previously reissued Advent on CD in 2004.)Jagjaguwar is excited to reissue Richard Youngs’ Advent, Youngs’ very first record originally released in 1990 in the vinyl format on Youngs’ own No Fans label. Only 300 LPs were released initially. It was then later released on the Table Of The Elements label and quickly went out of print. It became a true underground success story, a critical darling, with Alan Licht, for example, putting it on his “minimal top ten list” in the publication Halana. Simply put, it is essential. Excerpts from Richard Youngs’ essay, accompanying the CD, provide the best backdrop to this very special record: “There was no thought for the practicalities of what to do with 300 albums. It was vanity publishing. I would have laughed at the suggestion that original copies would come to exchange hands at inflated prices, that it would be re-released on CD, be performed at New York’s Knitting Factory, gain celebrity endorsements and be the start of some kind of recording career.” “It is a record by an intense young man. At the time the tempo seemed perilously slow; now it strikes me as quite racy. The vocals are pretty strident, now I sing less forcefully. I would also play the oboe and guitar differently these days. Traditionally, Advent is a season of hope; with the apocalyptic outlook of a 22 year old, I never saw it like that back then. But much came out of Advent. It feels like the real start of my music making and the end of doing maths.” Richard Youngs has since become the king of the progressive minimalists and his output has remained prolific. Since 2000, he has released seven full-length records on Jagjaguwar alone, in addition to multiple collaborations with other artists such as Makoto Kawabata (of Acid Mothers Temple fame), Simon Wickham-Smith and Neil Campbell. “A three-part composition for piano, voice, and ultra-nasty oboe and electric guitar, Advent indicated signs of life in a genre long dormant in the 80s ‘experimental’ scene. It continues the tradition from [Terry Riley’s] Reed Streams on down with gusto.”-Alan Licht’s “Minimal Top Ten List”, Halana