Articles
Rafael Anton Irisarri
Slow Six

Albums
Another Electronic Musician
Balmorhea
Celer
City of Satellites
Cylon
Deadbeat
Kyle Bobby Dunn
Eluvium
Ent
Ido Govrin
Danny Paul Grody
Chihei Hatakeyama
Wyndel Hunt
The Internal Tulips
Keepsakes
The Knife
Kshatriy
Lali Puna
Francisco López
Mask
Melodium
Monolake
Clara Moto
Myrmyr
Nos Phillipé
Ontayso
Outputmessage
Pleq
The Q4
Schuster
Shinkei + mise_en_scene
The Sight Below
Sphere Rex
subtractiveLAD
Bjørn Svin
Tamagawa
Ten and Tracer
Trills
Trouble Books
Yellow Swans

Compilations / Mixes
An Taobh Tuathail Vol. III
Does Your Cat Know My...
Emerging Organisms 3
Moment Sound Vol. 1

EPs
Brim Liski
Ceremony
Eric Chenaux
Abe Duque
Hieroglyphic Being
Rafael Anton Irisarri
Manaboo
Monolake
Mr Cooper & Dday One
Pleq & Seque
Nigel Samways
Santos and Woodward
Simon Scott
Soundpool
Stimming, Watt & Biel
Stray Ghost
Ten and Tracer
Stuchka Vkarmanye

Yellow Swans: Going Places
Type Recordings

Going Places perpetuates Type's recent gravitation towards the noisier end of the sonic spectrum. The release is also Yellow Swans' swan song (sorry), with American noise duo Pete Swanson (electronics, vocals) and Gabriel Mindel Saloman (guitars, electronics) having announced in April 2008 their decision to split. The album therefore affords a final opportunity to bask in the cranium-cracking bliss of Saloman's axe raging against Swanson's noise-generating machinery.

“Foiled” inaugurates the album with five minutes of volcanic turbulence and vulture-like squeals, after which “Opt Out” submerges the listener within a bubbling cauldron of pulsating rhythms, twanging guitars, and grimey washes for thirteen transporting minutes. The intensity escalates as the track develops, with bruising layers of guitar and howls of noise gradually combusting into a titanic, screeching fireball. A bell tolls throughout the convulsive death march “Limited Space” as if announcing beheadings certain to follow, and in “New Life,” shards of Saloman's guitar playing scrape and claw their way across a blistered landscape. “Sovereign” turns the dial down slightly for what could legimitately be called dark ambient, while the title track initially does much the same at album's end before taking flight with a lethal caterwaul. The work of Tim Hecker naturally comes to mind as one listens to Going Places, but Yellow Swans pushes even further into the noise realm. By album's end you'll feel like you've been buried under a mountain of volcanic ash.

February 2010