PETE SWANSON "Ghost O Clock" c20 [No Label]

Excellent self-released tape from Pete Swanson, formerly known as 1/2 of the Yellow Swans, with a spoo-oo-ooky title perfect for this Halloweekend. I've seen Pete play a couple times solo and he always rules but the first time I saw him was my favorite. He had his trunkload of gear set up per usual but through the performance the dude was just rockin' out, singing his song like the punkest noise dude in history. Anyway, the two side long pieces here are close to that territory. A smidge more mellow than said live set, the darkened cloud of noise on "Side A" features Pete's guitar strums and occasional vocals at its heart with a dusky outer coating. Really great track.

The flip side is an even better storm. The song bleeds through more and Pete layers a number of great guitar leads into the swarm. I love that the tape sounds smeary but not without definition. The chords cascade into each other seemingly in haphazard fashion but they all fit into the grand sleepy scheme. The tape sounds great at any hour but it's best at Ghost O Clock.

There's not much that really needs to be said about this; Swanson has been making fantastic music for nearly a decade now and his train keeps on rolling. If you haven't heard any of his solo work yet I highly recommend tracking this cassette down.

Also check out his LP Where I Was for a sampler of Pete's series of tapes over the past year or two.

DROWNER YELLOW SWANS (Tape Room)

Fucking impressive. Yet another mesmerizing and masterful set of sprawling new songs from the boundless Pete/Gabe union. Most who’ve heard the latest Y Swans Load opus, "At All Ends," haven’t hesitated in declaring it perhaps the crown achievement of their already no-filler discographical career. But "Drowner" is easily up there with it, at the caliber/strata of poetic mood sculptures like "Deterioration" and "Descension," eloquent guitar mantras, shifting clouds of reverb tape loops, weighted drones levitating in a harmonic sphere. Some B side passages boil with the vein of blistering, blinding noise that used to more frequently be considered their forte, but the bulk of Drowner’s 62 minutes are given to rippling waves of charged communal ambience and pensive, psychedelic undertow. Phenomenal, and worthy of an instant reissue.

DETERIORATION YELLOW SWANS (self-released)

Sick set of new Yellow Swans tracks compiled for their recent European free-noise tour (w/Metalux, Wiese, Yeh, etc), with classic elliptical visual tape-case trippery by Shawn Reed. Impeccable balance of Pete’s higher-end hypno-stasis tones with Gabe’s lower waves of heavy guitar undertow. When vocals cut into the electric communion they do so dramatically, bleeding and fried and spiritual…none of the post-industrial apocalyptic screams reminiscent of the Live During War Crimes volumes. Everything about Deterioration is ghostlier – the loops fray and fizzle with poetic amplifier decay, the guitar shrapnel reverberates with a subtler sense of fracture, the mounting hills of mixer drones pulse upwards like water displaced by deep-sea gases. As moving and keenly-edited a collection of psychic electronics as anything else in the Y Swans discography.