The Underground Youth return with Décollage, an audacious sonic reinvention forged from the act of stripping away and tearing at original material to expose something haunting and unexpected. Embracing elements of trip-hop and noise, the Berlin-based quartet’s 12th album drives through shadowy and hallucinatory soundscapes, marking a sublime leap into uncharted territory for a band devoted to experimentation.
“I built walls of static-coated hip-hop drum samples, layers of Lee Hazlewood-style string arrangements, and Serge Gainsbourg-inspired Mellotron melodies, then I began tearing away at these beautiful, chaotic walls of noise,” writes band leader Craig Dyer. The result is a collection of songs that push forward in search of hope, with textures that claw and swell around Dyer’s sermons of revolution and adoration. Alongside Dyer, The Underground Youth is comprised of drummer and visual artist Olya Dyer, guitarist Leonard Kaage, and bassist Samira Zahidi. Since its formation as a solo project by Dyer in 2008, the band has released 11 albums and 4 EPs, each one demonstrating an intense commitment to bending and fusing genres.
The album opener and lead single, ‘You (The Feral Human Thunderstorm)’, exemplifies just what Dyer talks of, pulling us into a crackling wall of hip-hop drums and strings that’s both noisy and aching with the romance of Dyer’s lyrics. That tone persists in the dreamy yet dark realm of ‘One of the Dreamers’, a track whose arrangement is intricate and driven by drums and eerie whispers from the other band members.
Some moments feel distinctly cinematic, like wandering through a dimly lit street that shifts and transforms as it leads toward a brighter future. ‘From the Ashes of Our Age’ evolves into a kind of ascent toward liberation, beginning with stripped-back guitars and gradually thickening into a lush, dreamy ballad. Its titular refrain serves as a reminder of what we come from, while pondering what lies ahead.
Dyer’s vocals take on an almost omniscient presence, brooding in tracks like ‘Father’ and the striking ‘Calliope’, my personal favourite. It’s appropriately dark and noisy with echoey and buzzing guitars that swell with the rising sound, and these background chants that evoke someone pleading to escape the eerie transcendence.
Décollage showcases some impressive manipulations of texture and instrumentation; the high-pitched woodwind, likely a pennywhistle, in ‘Your Beloved Hollywood’ weaves through sweet melodies in the background before the texture thins, leaving a moment of resonant church bells that feels like a final call to pay close attention to Dyer. The album closes with ‘Believe in Something’, a sermon that urges us not to despair at the state of the world. Lyrically, it’s filled with frustration yet desperate to instil hope, while the sound swells with lingering harmonies before cutting to silence, leaving us abruptly to reflect.
“It’s been so long that I’ve forgotten what I’ve promised to your God / In this age of madness, find some sense of relief / Believe in something better” -Believe in Something (2025)
The record closes on radio silence that lingers with the scraping and shifting sounds of an old tape reeling and chewing before harmonic strings emerge, leaving us to bask in the light of hope. It’s cinematic and reflective and a poignant other side to what we’ve been pulled through over the album’s duration.
Décollage stands out in The Underground Youth’s discography; the act of tearing apart and reworking material has resulted in tracks that are both dark and hauntological, yet undeniably serene. The trip-hop elements are a delight, driving home sentiments of romance, hope, and revolution that resonate long after the final note.
Décollage is out now via Fuzz Club Records.
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Review by Cerys Smith
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