Terence Ashley Burrows is an English author, multi-instrumental musician, and producer currently residing in London. He is widely recognized for his work as a cult performer under the alias Yukio Yung and as a co-founder of various musical projects, including The Chrysanthemums, Tonesucker, and Family Yung. In addition to his musical endeavors, Burrows is a prolific author, having written extensively on topics related to music history, theory, and tuition, as well as technology, business, popular psychology, and modern history. His published works include titles such as The Art of Sound (Thames & Hudson), Mute: A Visual Document (co-authored with Daniel Miller) (Thames & Hudson), Total Guitar Tutor (Barnes & Noble), and the ITV Visual History of the 20th Century (Carlton). Burrows has authored close to one hundred books, which have been distributed in sixteen countries and translated into a dozen languages.
Born in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, Burrows began his classical piano studies at the age of five. AllMusic characterizes him as “a classically trained keyboardist with an advanced degree in computer engineering.” At twelve, he taught himself to play guitar, later expanding his repertoire to include bass, drums, and saxophone. While still in his teens, Burrows founded the indie label Hamster Records, which released albums by various non-commercial acts such as Loch Ness Monster, Rimarimba, R. Stevie Moore, and Attrition, alongside his own "post-punk industrial funk" music under the name Jung Analysts. In the late 1980s, he released his first LP, Tree Climbing Goats (And Other Analysing Shanties), under the pseudonym Yukio Yung through Cordelia Records. Shortly thereafter, Burrows collaborated with Cordelia's owner, Alan Jenkins, the leader of The Deep Freeze Mice, to form The Chrysanthemums, where he served as lead singer, keyboard player, and producer. The band, known for its psychedelic art pop style and a dedicated cult following outside the UK, released four albums and four EPs. In 2010, German music magazine MusikExpress ranked them as the 23rd most underrated band of all time.
During this period, Burrows also collaborated with renowned "Krautrock" musician Asmus Tietchens, known for his previous work with Brian Eno and Cluster, to record a series of "abstract industrial" albums. Additionally, he produced a number of albums characterized by instrumental prog-rock-infused electronica as part of the duo Push-Button Pleasure.
In the early 1990s, Burrows briefly explored electronic dance music, releasing two 12-inch singles as Yoo-Ko on the Belgian ZZB label, one of which, "Matrix," achieved a position in the Top Ten of Germany's Network Dance Chart. He subsequently released more solo material as Yukio Yung, beginning with the 1993 LP Art Pop Stupidity and the CD A Brainless Deconstruction of the Popular Song. Over the next four years, he issued a single and four EPs. In 1997, he rejoined former Chrysanthemums bandmate Vladimir Zajkowiecz (also known as Martin Howells) to form a reimagined version of the group, renamed Chrys&themums to differentiate it from the original lineup.
Between 1998 and 2004, Burrows experienced a period of relative quiet in his musical career, attributed to health issues and a demanding publishing schedule. By 2003, he had published over 50 books and was recognized as one of the leading authors of music tuition titles, with sales exceeding 2 million copies in the United States alone. During this time, he also began a career as a university lecturer.
In 2004, Burrows re-emerged with a diverse array of musical projects, most notably rekindling his collaboration with U.S. home-recording pioneer R. Stevie Moore. This partnership resulted in the album Yung & Moore Versus The Whole Goddam Stinkin World, which Burrows compiled using an Apple Macintosh computer. The album's cover art portrays the duo as cartoon superheroes poised to destroy the planet, symbolizing the mainstream's longstanding indifference toward their music.
Burrows returned to the experimental sounds of his earlier career in 2006 with Tonesucker, a "fundamentalist" noise/drone project that would perform extensively at festivals across Europe over the next 15 years. He also showcased his talents on theremin and VCS3 at the prestigious Aldeburgh Festival in Britain.
In the 2020s, Burrows shifted focus back to song-oriented music, forming a new project called Family Yung with his 19-year-old son, Louis Burrows. Concurrently, The Chrysanthemums made a comeback with a 90-minute concept album inspired by a single 1969 episode of the children’s cartoon series Scooby-Doo.
