Yellow Swans "Dreamed Yellow Swans" CD
[PACrec]
All of the material offered herein by this duo was recorded live in 2002, with two of the tracks coming from a self-released lathe cut LP that was limited to just 30 copies, while the remainder is from an unreleased split LP with Nice Nice. Opening things up is an untitled piece with entirely different sounds coming from the right and left channels, among them faint percussive beats, ambient hums, glitchy distortion, chaotic fits of feedback, lots of acerbic high-end, etc. This is definitely the most active and aggressive selection, not to mention the most concise (despite running around six minutes). The 15-minute "Garrison" is initially more chilled out, using a subdued rhythm and ethereal ringing sounds in the distance alongside a weird sort of midrange loop. The panning effects are still prevalent, but certainly not as hardcore in this piece. Things persist in this manner with slight variations for several minutes, eventually morphing into a similar sounding but crunchier and more chaotic mishmash of the sounds, moving back and forth from layered and intense to slightly stripped down but still rather frantic. "Gold Rush" is more aggressive, still using strange beats amidst glitchy distorted sounds, but this time with shouted vocals way back in the mix behind tones that are more obviously generated by guitar feedback manipulations. Midway through the 11-minute piece things strip down to just rumbling feedback and switch over to a buzzing sort of low-end with more vibrant sounds bouncing around behind the undercurrents. The massive 20-minute "Drowning in Paradise" ends the disc, opening with guitar chords and randomly sparse guitar noises with humming low-end and such flitting across the background. I'm not really into that kind of stuff at all, but admittedly once the more windy distortion and biting feedback start cutting in it sounds pretty nice. This piece has a lot more shifting back and forth involved, and doesn't have any really consistent threads for significant durations of the structure. I'm not into all of the styles of sound explored, but the depth and resonance of the low-end later in the piece is quite admirable, and there are some pretty twisted manipulations in this one (Great shouting vocals at the end, too!). The disc comes in a black and white matte digipack with clean text over a black background on the back cover and minimal high contrast artwork of the duo performing live on the cover - complete with swans on their heads!? Included inside is a black and white booklet with awesome high contrast artwork devoting one panel to each song, and it has a very hardcore/punk looking aesthetic that I really like. This is an unusual release, certainly different from all of the other PACrec offerings to date. It's a little boring to me in its entirety, but I admire the group for taking a different path that doesn't sound like the majority of what's out there, and it is more good than bad, so... I'm intrigued. (6/10)
Running time - 52:27, Tracks: 4
[Notable tracks: Untitled, Garrison]
PACrec - http://www.iheartnoise.com

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