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.

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.)