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Oakland's Yellow Swans, the project of vocalist Pete Swanson and guitarist
Gabriel Mindel-Saloman (both also playing electronic/digital instruments),
created the tapestries for electronics and drum-machines of
Bring The Neon War Home (Narnack, 2004).
The album has room for both the punk anthem Police Eternity for
gurgling electronics,
massive guitar distortion and
Ministry-grade industrial rhythm, and for
the
abstract musique concrete and digital soundpainting of High On The Mountain Of Love, set among post-apocalyptic miasmas and galactic eruptions.
The 13-minute Neon War
is propelled by irregular polyrhythms and scarred by monumental distortions
like Jimi Hendrix improvising on keyboards
at a drum'n'bass club. Scream-like drones further devastate the vision
and introduce an element of horror. Halfway the piece loses steam, as if it
were drowning in quicksands; but then it picks up rhythm again and it turns
into a pounding tribal dance.
The eleven-minute Untitled begins like a group of improvisers tuning
their instruments to each other, and it ends like the tuning went severely
bad.
Yellow Swans worked at the improbable confluence of
free jazz, musique concrete, shamanic music and rock music.
Psychic Secession (Numerical Thief, 2005) displays an evil focus
on rapidly moving masses of sound.
The 20-minute True Union careens along via
undulating industrial clangor that works both as drone and rhythm. A
voice hissing from the other side of a nuclear explosion tries to connect
with a pulsation that is rapidly increasing. All sources of noise converge
into an orgasmic maelstrom that embeds a wild voodoo dance.
A gentle whisper introduces the stuttering steam engine of
Psychic Secession that rapidly absorbs all sorts of whirling
grinding noises.
The ten-minute I Woke Up transitions from brute wall of noise pierced
by acid Butthole Surfers-esque vocals
into a concerto for percussion ensemble only to return to the starting point.
The eleven-minute Velocity Of The Yolk is the "ambient" counterpart
of those manic excursions into psychosis and schizophrenia, but the (jarring)
calm is disrupted by the
witchy vocals of
Eva Salens (Inca Ore)
and Christina Carter of Charalambides.
Dreamed Yellow Swans (PACrec, 2005)
Drift (Root Strata, 2006) continued the "ambient" experiment of
Velocity Of The Yolk, recasting their machine-powered meditations into
a morbid, subliminal tension, and eskewing the abysses of torment that flooded
Bring The Neon War Home and most of Psychic Secession.
The first movement consists of hypnotic oscillation of strong vibrating
clusters. The second one sounds like the beginning of a raga coupled with
echoes of gongs before digressing into the most soothing drone of their career.
The third one morphs repeatedly until it seems to drown in arctic winds.
Compared with previous works, Drift sounds a bit mellow and unfocused.
Global Clone (PacRec, 2007) collects two cassettes and some rarities.
At All Ends (Load, 2007)
Descension Yellow Swans (Three Lobed Recordings, 2007)
Inca Ore, the project of Eva Salens, manipulated her vocals (reverb, echo and delay) to shape the two lengthy oneiric pieces of the mini-album A Knit of My Own Fibers/ When You Are Sleeping I Tell You Secrets (Jyrk, 2005),
the 21-minute A Knit Of My Own Fibers and the ten-minute
When You're Sleeping I Tell You Secrets.
Brute Nature Versus Wild Magic (Weird Forest, 2005) documents two of her live performances.
The Birds In The Bushes (5 Rue Christine, 2006) and
A Drawing With Shadows The Light Is Coming From The Sun (Atheists Are Gods, 2007)
were collaborations with the Lemon Bear's Orchestra.
By the time of
Birthday Of Bless You (Not Not Fun Records, 2008) she had incorporated
more instruments and returned to a more traditional song format.
The drift towards more conventional structures continued on
Silver Sea Surfer School (Not Not Fun, 2009).
Meanwhile, the Yellow Swans had dissolved but their recordings continued to surface.
Going Places (Type, 2009) is mainly devoted to the
13-minute Opt Out, yet another "ambient" soundscape that explodes into
a massive cacophony, and to
the nine-minute Going Places, a crescendo of agonies.
Foiled and Limited Space are shorter versions of the pieces of
Public Space.
The whole is permeated by an ideology of sonic overload that threatens to
rip apart even the simplest moments.
The mini-album Public Space (En/Of, 2009) contains
Public Space, a heavily polluted poem of musique concrete,
and an 18-minute version of Foil, a simple regression and then
progression of cascading distorted bliss.
Being There (Type, 2010) collects Public Space
and two pieces from split albums of 2008.
Comedy Hypnosis is a study in coalescing extreme noise from a sparse
soundscape and turning it into a sort of abrasive psychedelic "om".
The crackling nebula of Inhabitants (possibly the most impressive piece
here) also has psychedelic overtones.
No matter how sophisticated, these compositions were a far cry from
the terrifying impact of their early works.
After the Yellow Swans disbanded,
Pete Swanson started a solo career via
Static Space (2006), several cassettes,
the mini-album
Feelings In America (2010), containing the 16-minute The Fermata,
and then the mini-album I Don't Rock At All (2011), containing three lengthy droning compositions, and the more experimental
Man with Potential (2012), that adopted the electronic beat of dance
music to populate its noisescapes and then indulged in the abstract
soundpainting of the 25-minute Challenger.
Charalambides' Tom Carter and Yellow Swans' Pete Swanson formed
Sarin Smoke, that released Smokscreen (Three Lobed, 2007).
It Chars Our Lips Yet Still We Drink (Wholly Other, 2007) and
Vent (Mie, 2012).
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