SWAMP HORSE [S/T] (Husk Records)

Reverb mix = 100% wet. Gloomy and awesome. Swamp Horse is, apparently, Josh Lay and Morgan Rankin. But seriously, who cares what sounds are going into this cavernous processing chain? You could play a Steve Miller Band CD through this much reverb and it would probably sound cool. Well, perhaps not. But this is some serious dank cave shit. Real dank. And it's good. There's a lot of this kind of stuff popping up nowadays-- the kind of stuff that sounds like the soundtrack to an unrealized horror film script. A bunch of people are playing with that theme lately, and I'm usually very suspicious of it. The doom fetish really does nothing for me, but this Swamp Horse tape works, despite its participation in the sub-genre. It does so through simplicity. The pieces never leave their homogenous soundworld, nor do they attempt to manufacture any narrative. There's no payoff to the suspense they build, Swamp Horse just leaves you hanging. (And I like weird tape lengths-- a c21? Weird.)