Yellow Swans
Friday, June 26th, 2009Wednesday night that was a great show at the Josephine. Local synth duo Brother Raven, and out of town solo acts Magneticring, Pete Swanson and Zaïmph. Brother Raven used old analog tools to evoke the atmosphere of the Sky Records’ 1970’s output. Magneticring’s LP is in a similar vein, but this performance he used the EMS Synthi to create some sounds reminenscent of early electronic pioneers. Pete Swanson, one half of the now defunct Yellow Swans, used an old open reel tape deck to build up lovely noise loops on top of which he added heavily distorted and processed guitar and vocals to great effect. Zaïmph played three pieces focusing more on vocals than her in store performance here at Dissonant Plane last week. While each piece was distinctive, the whole set glowed with a slow motion noise bliss.
The following day, Pete and Marcia (a.k.a. Zaïmph) stopped in the shop on the way to Vancouver, B.C. This gave us a chance to expand our selection of Yellow Swans in the shop, which was actually at nil since we had sold out of everything. As I alluded to above, Yellow Swans are no longer a going concern, but apparently have only recently finished their last studio album and will have a few more recordings coming out. As anyone who has looked into them should know, they discography is vast, but only a small number of titles are available at any given time as most are very limited. We were able to get CDs released under the names Descension Yellow Swans, Doubled Yellow Swans, Drowner Yellow Swans, and just plain old Yellow Swans by themselves and in collaboration with The Cherry Point, Mouthus, and John Wiese. The CD “Portable Dunes” with Wiese is the newest of the bunch. So new that is not actually released yet. as it is on John’s Helicopter label and John is currently in Poland where he is playing the Musica Genera festival this weekend. Of course that was the first thing I threw on and I found it opens with a serious roar of sound and through its five tracks becames progressive more calm and meditative. Of course variety courses through the veins of the Yellow Swans catalog. It is all more or less “noise music”, but one disc will be droning while another will add active element on top of this bed or push the sounds the further extremes.
In the past there have been a handful of Pete Swanson solo releases, and now he’s got two really limited tapes. He says they are essentially for sale at shows only, so we were only able to get one copy each of “Denim Life” and “Unlimited Options”. Meant to get around more at the two CDs releases on Pete’s new label Freedom To Spend. The first is by Bulbs a guitar and drums duo that sounds nothing like their instrumentation would suggest. Pete himself compares this group’s sound to the releases on the Kompakt label as their music is very glitchy and experimental with rhythms and sounds you might expect from a laptop artist, but obviously with more life in them. The second release on the label is by Dragging An Ox Through Water. This one is a weird mix of folky guitar and vocals with homebuilt electronics. It’s got songs, and you could sing along to it, but its plenty strange too and makes for a unique and enjoyable album.
Eric
