Despite having called it a day nearly two years ago, there’s just a little bit more to come from Yellow Swans before their final breath is exhaled. Naturally anyone in the vicinity when that ultimate gasp is made won’t hear anything remotely human. Yellow Swans being fine purveyors of all things noise and drone, will expire emitting the deathly rail-rattle of a tube train careering from the tracks and hurtling into a pile of commuters, who for some reason are all holding baking tins.
For the last ten years Pete Swanson and Gabriel Mindel Saloman have been pinging out cassettes, and CD-Rs of material at a rate that would put them some way above what might be considered prolific. They’ve also managed to amass a fair quantity of fans in that time, and as a last hurrah, it is perhaps fitting that they should shuffle off into a static obscured sunset in considerable style.
Going Places is thankfully, a fine piece of work. That said, if white noise, subtle tone shifts, drone, and occasional outbursts of electronic brutality aren’t your thing, you might as well scratch Yellow Swans from your to-do list.
‘Foiled’ opens things in ominous fashion, awash with cavernous echoes, mechanical whirring and a relentless thumping percussive pulse keeping the track alive. It craftily builds in intensity with feedback loops increasing in volume, and electo-screams flashing across the soundscape. This is the sounds of meccano-ants burying Metal Machine Music in a sugar cave.
The massive thirteen-minute ‘Opt-Out’ bubbles along quite nicely courtesy of an unusual beat that is reminiscent of a pool of boiling mud. A fairly calm and languid piece, its smooth surfaces are frequently broken with seething jagged interjections of crashing noise and wailing feedback. However, such outbursts are handled carefully, and rather than disrupting the peaceful, ambient nature that introduces the song, they somehow fit in seamlessly leading the track forward into sonic oblivion.
Going Places is an album that deals in beauty and violence in equal measure. ‘Sovereign’ might sound as if it has been recorded in a swamp as fire flies flit around the reeds and crickets set about rubbing their legs, but Saloman and Swanson seem quite happy to add an industrial edge to things and introduce dark rumbling patterns into the mix. It’s the equivalent of dropping a streamroller into a babbling brook, and it sounds just as good.
Going Places may be a little down tempo for some, but really this is a phenomenal exercise in subtlety and cautious development. It might well be Yellow Swans’ last hurrah, but in these exemplary explorations of sound and space they’ve left a wonderful parting gift for their fans.
Buy the album on [itunes link="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/new-life/id350133813?uo=4" title="Yellow_Swans-Going_Places_(Album)" text="iTunes"] | Rhythm Online
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Totally don’t see the appeal in white noise, static and vague efforts to create melody behind a cacophonic brickwalled barrel of shite.
“a phenomenal exercise in subtlety”? A distinct lack of variation, more like. Don’t get it.
I think this is one of those albums where there’s a real split in opinion. I love it.
There’s a real split in your brain, Hughesy.
To be fair I had people walking out of the house while I was reviewing it saying “it’s doing my head in”. Noise is just one of those things I think. I should mention Ben Frost here too – his latest album is pretty terrifying, and rather satisfying, but admittedly, not for everyone.
Ash, do you ever become relaxed by the din of everyday sounds? That’s what I get out of this album. Plus some raw, general melodic themes. It’s pacifying, meditative. That’s the appeal. There’s no end-all or be-all about it. Looking at your post, it appears you get the gist of their music. So really, what the problem is?