SWAMP HORSE "Ravish" (Community College)

While it is not a Cassette Gods law that I do so, I avoid writing about the same artists over and over again. We get sent a lot of tapes, and, as a guy who writes mostly about Harsh Noise, I tend to have plenty of new things to ramble about. Which is why it should be surprising that I am writing about another Swamp Horse tape only two months after I wrote about the last one. And this is only their second tape! Perhaps when they release their third, I will be again so compelled to write that I will continue to cover their entire discography.
My review of the self titled cassette on Husk was positive, but I wouldn't say it was a rave. When CG was sent a promo of "Ravish" I thought I'd sit back and let one of my colleagues take a crack at it. When I found that nobody had claimed the tape, I popped it in my player, with no intention of reviewing it. This time, Swamp Horse has become, like, my favorite new band.
The A side contains one long shimmering drone that rises and falls with it's own woozy logic, with tones that conjure a low-fi Vangelis, without the heroic melodies. It's much less spooky than the previous cassette; where the self titled tape was the soundtrack to the creeping approach of a Lovecraftian forest beast, this first side is the morning after, when the sunrise finally breaks on the faces of the night's survivors. Side B is a return to doomier territory, but retains some of the glassy high-end sheen of the A side's palette. Beneath touches of spikey, hairy distortion, a nebula of synth tones swirl and churn. A more science fictiony affair, perhaps-- like watching a second generation VHS dupe of Event Horizon on a really small TV, and still getting the shit scared out of you.

IS "All Class" (Community College)

If dear reader is interested in the sort of conceptual harsh noise artist who references Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger in the same breath as Phil Blankenship and Whitehouse, you might already be familiar with Is, the prolific project of Chicago's Bryan Tholl. This new slab on the Ohio-based Community College imprint saunters down a few different avenues ranging from contact mic'd scrap metal rattling to hissing white squall to subdued rumbling. Side B's "Trochoid" is probably the more successful in pulling off a combination of these textures, ending up with a compelling pairing of half low-end wall, half high-pitched drone. Copies are still available as of this writing. Comes with a glossy heavy-stock j-card.

www.somnimage.com/is.htm
www.myspace.com/isthisis
www.myspace.com/communitycollegerecords