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.