Yukio Yung

Yukio Yung is the pseudonym of Terry Burrows, a London-based singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist with an apparently limitless appetite for both pseudonyms and side projects. Aside from his best-known alias, which he first used in the mid-'80s as one-third of the psych pop group the Chrysanthemums, Burrows released instrumental prog rock as Push-Button Pleasure, acid house dance mixes as YooKo, and free jazz-influenced pop art experiments as the Jung Analysts. To top it all off, Burrows released albums of avant-garde minimalism under his own name. All of this is in addition to his day job as a prolific author of computer manuals and music instruction books. Born in Ipswich, England, on January 14, 1963, Burrows taught himself guitar, bass, drums, and saxophone as a teenager, in addition to pursuing a classical education on piano that had begun at the age of five. Although influenced by punk, it was more the anti-record industry D.I.Y. ethos that attracted him than the music. Burrows' influences included Syd Barrett, the Kinks, the Who, and the entire Canterbury Scene with its prog rock sound that centered around the Soft Machine and its various offshoots, along with other '60s-influenced post-punks like XTC and the Television Personalities. By the mid-'80s, Burrows had started his own indie label, Hamster Records, releasing albums by his first band, the Jung Analysts, and similar non-commercial artists. A chance meeting with singer/guitarist Alan Jenkins, whose psych pop cult band Deep Freeze Mice had just broken up, led to the formation of the Chrysanthemums, for whom Burrows was lead singer and keyboardist between 1986 and 1991; the band name, like Burrows' newly adopted stage name of Yukio Yung, came about as part of his fascination with Japanese culture. Burrows...