Yusuf Azak
Bio
Yusuf is, I believe, an Aberdonian of Turkish descent currently living in Glasgow. I first came across him by virtue of a pair of self-released EPs, which we’ll be re-releasing on Song, by Toad Records in early 2011.
Those EP’s are, in some ways quite straighforward, Nick Drakey-sounding affairs, but they are smothered in loop after loop and Yusuf’s voice is honeyed and gorgeous. The first time I heard his stuff I actually described it like this: “Basically he sounds like a ghostly set of old bellows, wheezing in and out and managing to rather surprisingly generate some fantastic songs whilst doing so.” and I honestly haven’t been able to improve on it since.
His older stuff was almost all recorded onto tape, digitised and then looped, looped and looped again, but recently he’s been doing a lot more straight digital recording. And where the looping and layering were probably the most prominent sounds on his early EPs, his debut album Turn on the Long Wire shows much more evidence of his amazing guitar style.